NFU lead on bee health issues Chris Hartfield reports on an international workshop on bees hosted this week by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
The meeting included keynote presentations on monitoring changes in pollinator populations, and on how to assess what is impacting on bees when they are facing multiple challenges (these are available online here).
One of the remarkable pieces of new research (Koos Biesmeijer's presentation, available here) was that the analysis of historical records in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK had revealed that populations of common wild bee species had remained fairly stable in the last 20 years. However, already rare species had not fared so well. This made it clear that, in these countries at least, most bees are not on the edge of apocalyptic populations declines (with total loss of insect pollination and the doom of man following shortly thereafter). The fact remains though that populations of many bee species are still lower than pre-1970.
This research begs the question – if we are trying to protect the pollination services provided by bees, which bees are we trying to protect? Common bees (which do not appear to be in decline), rare species (which often require specific habitats and resources), or all bees? Because the approaches needed protect pollination services will differ depending on which bees are responsible for providing that pollination.
‘Take home’ messages from the meeting were that
- the assessment of the multiple challenges facing bees is complex and difficult
- our knowledge about wild bees is poor compared to honeybees
- we need to define better exactly what we are trying to protect (e.g. the diversity of bees, pollination services, honey production, crop production) and identify what levels of impacts on these things would be acceptable
- we need to develop new tools and ways of assessing impacts
- different stakeholders have different priorities, and we need to clearly define terminologies so there is a common understanding and good communication between all stakeholders.
While the aim of this EFSA meeting was clearly to discuss all the problems challenging bees, including pests and disease, loss of habitat, lack of suitable food, changing climate, and chemicals in the bees environment, the majority of discussion frustratingly ended-up focussing on risks associated with pesticide use. Perhaps this was inevitatable given the very recent activity in Europe on neonicotinoids.
Those from outside of Europe I spoke with were surprised by this focus on pesticides. I think they were surprised because, despite EFSA making it clear in the ground rules that it is a science-based organisation, and what we were aiming to do was discuss the state of the art evidence, there was still a remarkable amount of ideology and non-evidence based opinions that crept into the discussions.
EFSA were right to organise this meeting in response to the growing consensus among scientists that the origins of bee colony losses are multifactorial, and mounting evidence that the various factors challenging bees may act in combination.
However, before we can make real progress that effectively tackles the many factors challenging bees and delivers real benefits for bee health, it seems clear to me that we all need to put aside the disproportionate preoccupation with pesticides.