A large five-year European-wide research project, led by academics at Royal Holloway has confirmed that commonly used pesticides in agriculture are still significantly harming bumble bees, with colonies growing less and producing fewer offspring.
Royal Holloway's research supports the need for sustainability goals to reduce pesticide use and risk – critical challenges highlighted at the Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP meeting and a vital part of the European Farm to Fork strategy – with anticipated benefit to bees and, potentially, their pollination services.
Professor Mark Brown from the Department of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway said:
“Our research highlights there is still much work to be done in terms of mitigating the effects of approved pesticides on pollinators, not just in the UK, but across Europe.
The scale of this work provides a step-change in our understanding of the impact of agrochemicals on pollinator health, but we need to act now. A strong, and governmentally supported move towards integrated pest management in agricultural systems across the globe, resulting in a reduction in pesticide use, would dramatically improve the health of wild pollinators, and broader biodiversity.
“Bumble bees, and other animals, do not recognise international borders, and to protect them, we need to take a similarly international approach, to make sure their pollinating colonies survive, nature thrives and in turn, so does the food chain we all rely on.”
POSHBEE
With a grant of €9million, the research consortium, POSHBEE, led by Mark Brown, Professor in Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation at Royal Holloway, studied honey bees, bumble bees, and solitary bees, who all face, in Europe and around the globe, many threats and are in decline.
The POSHBEE consortium of academics, governmental organisations, industry, and NGOs collaborated to address the issue of agrochemicals to ensure the sustainable health of bees and their pollination services in Europe.
The five year study incorporated the knowledge and experience of local beekeeping, farming organisations and academic researchers (including the EU RefLab for bee health), to provide the first comprehensive pan-European assessment of the exposure hazard of chemicals.
It looked at the mix of chemicals that bees are exposed to, as well as their co-occurrence with pathogens and nutritional stress for solitary, bumble, and honey bees across two major cropping systems.
Professor Mark Brown commented,
“With 42 partners working on POSHBEE across the UK and Europe, and with the help of experts from science to bee keepers and farmers, we aimed to make ground-breaking findings and work on ways to keep bees healthy.
“We hope that having a good understanding of the threats that bees face, as well as a range of advice and tools for policymakers and practical bee keepers and conservation organisations will keep our bees healthy into the future. After all, they are our best pollinators and are essential for our human well-being.”
