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INSIGNIA-EU Newsletter 10, May 2023
In May throughout Europe the beekeeping season is now well under way, and the first sampling round of INSIGNIA-EU has been successfully completed in all 27 EU countries. Much debate had taken place amongst the members of the INSIGNIA-EU consortium about the optimum time for the start of the sampling, because of the considerable climatic differences between EU countries. For example, at a time when southern Spain has the start of its spring, and honey bee colonies are expanding rapidly, some colonies in Norway and Sweden may still be under snow. Other considerations such as public holidays including the timing of the Greek Orthodox Easter also had to be taken into account, as they affect the ability of the Citizen Scientist beekeepers to carry out the sampling operations. In the end we arrived at a pan-European sampling scheme in which in all 27 countries the same sampling round is done simultaneously.
The considerable logistical challenges of supplying from several different sources all of the different sampling media and packaging materials for some 20,000 samples to the National Coordinators in each country and then from them to the individual CS beekeepers were met, in order for everything to be placed in the colonies in time for the start of sampling.
The INSIGNIA-EU consortium were keen that the sampling media would be adaptable to the many different hive types and different beekeeping practices in different countries, and it was pleasing that it was even possible to install everything into the distinctive Slovenian AŽ hives (Fig. 1). The design of the APITrap was such that it can be fitted into all sizes of brood frame, ensuring that the sampling area is the same in all colonies. This leaves a space in the frame around the APITrap, and it has been interesting to see the different ways that bees have filled this space with worker or drone brood at different rates (Fig. 2).
Pollen traps have been part of the INSIGNIA project since its beginning in 2018, and are a reliable and well established sampling method. Individual beekeepers may not, however, have used them before, and inevitably some beekeepers in several countries expressed concern that the bees took time to become used to them, often clustering at the entrance, apparently unable to enter the hive. Different climatic conditions also affected results, with beekeepers in Ireland reporting high humidity and continual rain which affected the amount of pollen in the traps and the risk of it rapidly becoming mouldy, whilst in Slovenia one beekeeper expressed concern that in strong sun and high temperatures, parts of the widely available yellow plastic type can distort and jam in the closed position, and in Spain additional ventilation is very important. With time and adjustments, however, pollen trap samples were successfully obtained (Fig. 3). Similar variation between countries has been observed in the willingness of bees to provide propolis samples. Opportunities have been taken with all this activity to publicise INSIGNIA-EU, and for example National Coordinator for Finland, Maritta Martikkala appeared recently on the evening news on Finnish TV talking with a CS beekeeper about the sampling: https://yle.fi/a/74-20028751 (Fig. 4).
One difficulty that the INSIGNIA-EU consortium had not anticipated was bear damage. It is well known that bears like honey, and that beekeepers in parts of north America regularly suffer bear damage and have to protect apiaries using electric fences. The Eurasian brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos) was formerly present all over Europe, but was hunted to extinction in most countries centuries ago. It does survive in certain areas, and indeed in Romania, the number of bears has increased from some 6,000 to 8,000 in the last seven years, so bears destroying hives have become a far from rare event in some parts of Romania. Just before the first sampling round, the apiary of beekeeper Ioan Dorin Foaltin in Mureş County, central Romania was attacked by a bear. Ten hives were destroyed, one of which was one of the two INSIGNIA-EU hives (Fig. 5.), which has had to be replaced by another. Ioan Foaltin says that neither he nor anyone else in the neighbourhood has ever experienced such an event.
Romanian National Coordinator Constantin Dobrescu reports that the main nectar flows in Romania are oilseed rape, acacia, linden (lime) and sunflower. A difficult period for beekeepers is between flowering of the acacia and linden, when there is usually a three week forage gap. Beekeepers in the higher zones have the opportunity to utilise raspberry bloom in this period, but this unfortunately coincides with the most frequent bear incidents. Raspberry bushes tend to cover areas where the forest has been cut down 3-4 years earlier. Sadly this is a situation now occurring almost everywhere in the Carpathian mountains, due to the extensive deforestation that has taken place, legally or illegally, over the last 20-30 years. The same areas that benefit the beekeepers are also an ideal habitat for bears. So, there are thus two facts that have changed in the relationship between beekeepers and bears in recent times: firstly the increase in the area covered by raspberries in the highlands, and secondly the decrease in the area of forest, the natural habitat of bears, at exactly the same time that the number of bears has increased. It is not clear what is the best approach to dealing with this situation in future, but beekeeping practices have to adapt to this new situation as Ioan Foaltin has now done by buying an electric fence. Although wildlife is a wealth of Romania that needs to be protected and encouraged, in a country with a population of 8,000 bears and 40,000 beekeepers the likelihood of such “interactions” between bears and honey bees is considerable! |
