BEE HEALTH AND BEHAVIOUR LAB

EFSA is the agency of the European Union (European Commission, European Parliament, Member States) that provides independent scientific advice on existing and emerging risks (food and feed, animal health and welfare, plant health, nutrition). Scientific expert, member of the working groups such as MUST-B (Development of a holistic approach for the risk assessment on MUltiple STressors in Bees, Scientific Committee and Emerging Risks Unit), HEALTHY-B (Assessing the health status of managed honeybee colonies, Animal Health Panel), HMF (assessment of HMF risks for bees, Contamination Panel), Food and Feed (pollen feed for bees, Food and Feed/GMO applications). Among others, we published the MUST-B Scientific Opinion, the HEALTHY-B Scientific Opinion, a Technical Report on modelling multiple stressors, and an Event Report on bee health.

The agricultural European Innovation Partnership (EIP-AGRI), European Commission (DG Agriculture and Rural Development) works to foster competitive and sustainable farming and forestry that 'achieves more and better from less'.

Scientist Expert member of the 'Bee health and sustainable beekeeping' Focus Group, aiming at ensuring the sustainability of beekeeping in the face of challenges linked to pests and diseases, intensification of agriculture and climate change. We published a Final Report, a Minipaper on the mitigation of major bee stressors, and a Minipaper on bee monitoring. 

The University of California San Diego (UCSD) is a public research and education university, located in beautiful La Jolla and part of the larger University of California system. It is recognized as one of the top public research universities worldwide. Our collaboration with UCSD started many years ago and focuses on the investigation of the health and behaviour of multiple bee species.

The French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES, Paris) is a French governmental agency which main mission is to assess food and environmental health risks, within the domains of human health, animal health and welfare, and plant health. ANSES is dedicated to bee health and is the European Union Reference Laboratory for honey bee health (EC), the National Reference Laboratory for honey bee health (French Ministry), and the Reference Laboratory for honey bee diseases (OIE). We are working to refine risk assessments and investigate the multifaceted impact of pesticides on bee health.

The collaboration with the University of Maryland (UMD) aims at investigating the major drivers of bee health through analysis of monitoring data. We use real-world data on the health status of honey bee colonies, pesticide contamination and exposure, land use, and various other factors to predict and interpret environmental influence on bee health.

The Prevention of honey bee COlony LOSSes (COLOSS) is an international, non-profit researcher association that aims at improving the well-being of bees. This association involves researchers, veterinarians, agriculture extension specialists, and students. Active member since 2009, coordinates the Nutrition Task Force and various experiments for the APITOX Task Force.

The collaboration with the Social Insects Research Group based at the Department of Zoology and Entomology of the University of Pretoria (UP), South Africa,  was aimed at investigating the impact of pesticides on honey bee foraging and thermoregulation (for example this publication). We studied the local species, Apis mellifera scutellata.