Julius-Kühn-Archiv 423

Abstract

Honeybees are cherished by the public, and everybody will agree that their well-being is important. The fate of honeybees in Europe and worldwide attracts extensive public attention, even of politicians and in the European Parliament. Following reports of serious poisoning of honeybees by pesticides across Europe in 1978 and 1979, agricultural scientists in the Netherlands supported by colleagues in France, Germany, Switzerland and England set up the ICP-BR Bee Protection Group. The fi rst meeting of scientists from government agencies, industry and universities was held in Wageningen in 1980. Their objective was, and remains to ensure the safety of honeybees and other bee species in agricultural crops and to ensure that they are not harmed by the approved use of plant protection chemicals. Since 1980 poisoning of honeybees has been greatly reduced thanks in no small part to the work of the Group’s members, to better understanding of the reasons for bee poisoning and to the introduction of safer insecticides and modern advances in crop protection techniques. However in recent years there has been universal concern about a serious worldwide collapse of honeybee colonies, often referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder or Bee Decline. Scientists, including members of the Bee Protection Group are actively searching for the precise reasons and hence for a cure. Bad winter survival, genetic problems, the Varroa mite, diseases and often pesticides were named as culprits. At the 9th symposium of the Bee Protection Group (York, 2005) several specialist groups were formed to address the most important of these problems. These groups reported in the 10th symposium (Bucharest, 2008) with proposals for better risk assessments for systemic insecticides, better semi-fi eld and fi eld testing and better bee brood testing. These proposals are published for the fi rst time in these proceedings of the Bucharest symposium, together with the reports of many other new developments in the area of protecting honeybees from the undesired eff ects of pesticides. One particular undesired eff ect reported here are the incidents caused by dust abrasion from treated seeds in Germany, France, Italy and Slovenia. The proposals resulting from the working groups, and from the discussions and recommendations of the symposium will be processed by EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organisation) to a new environmental risk assessment scheme for plant protection products and honeybees in Europe. In spite of considerable eff ort the precise cause of Bee Decline remains obscure, although signifi cant progress has been made recently, and the Bee Protection Group continues to play its part in seeking an early solution. However careful analysis of all the available data shows that pesticides are not the cause.