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Description
Honey bees have been challenged with severe changes in their natural environment due to monocultures, increased use of pesticides, climate change and pollution. Pressure is reflected in lower disease tolerance altered behaviour and colony loss, which also affect beekeepers. The beekeepers compensate colony losses by introducing new ones, often with queens of unproven quality and/or pedigree. Also, the desire to improve the colony management or yield prompts beekeepers to look for best-buy genetic material with traits that match their needs.
With our project, we wish to improve the situation in the project beneficiary countries: Slovenia, Croatia and North Macedonia, where the implementation of mating control has been neglected and thus results of the selection effort were watered-down.
By adapting the knowledge and experience of the donor partner from Norway and the use of novel research supported by the expert partner from Sweden, we will establish tailor-made effective mating control systems, adjusted to the local environmental conditions. Our results will be presented to end-users and policymakers in the beneficiary countries to improve the current conservation status of selected bee subspecies.
To ensure the sustainability of the project, clear protocols, legal recommendations and revision of breeding programmes will be prepared. Use of the recommendations by all queen breeders will be promoted through training and dissemination of the project results.
Summary of project results
Genetic erosion in honey bees is paramount threat in times when locally-adapted genotypes are considered as an advantage for response to climate challenges. The honey bee breeding programs serve as a tool of conservation or improvement trough selection, making domestic bees more attractive to work with and thus preserving the local gene-pool. The most critical in the implementation of breeding programs is the controlled mating. Mating of queen bees occurs uncontrolled in the air, which can result in (un)intentional introductions of undesired traits or other subspecies to the local population. Teaming up with donor and expert partners to obtain the necessary know-how, BeeConSel used the scientifically proven tools to establish tailor-made effective mating control of honey bees for the project beneficiaries.
In the first step, the project partners surveyed beekeepers'' perception of mating control and its economics. It was found that implementation of mating control is hampered by counter-productive legal framework, and it is not attractive to beekeepers due to fact that cost of production of queens produced with controlled is almost double. The project partners organized three workshops to ensure the transfer of needed knowledge both to partners and associated stakeholders. The first workshop was dedicated to knowledge transfer to beneficiary partners, while the second and third workshops involved target groups as well, ensuring their awareness.
It was of high importance to apply the multilateral knowledge exchange and execute unparalleled fieldwork in which several approaches to mating control that can be tailored to local requirements were tested. Later, by verifying their efficiency in the lab, the partners modelled their performance and selected several as a possible solution for national breeding programs and involved queen breeders. The proposed solutions suggested controlled mating brings 1.4 - 2.1 gain over the gains in selection without mating. Such result would make local queen bees more attractive, thus facilitating preservation of gene pool and at the same time offer beekeepers a key tool in the selection of desired traits.
The final layer of the project was using the results to amend and improve the legislation in partner countries. The consortium have suggested legislation changes during the project run, some of which were already applied. These changes encourage and assist queen breeders in implementation of mating control via subsidies (in SI, HR) and provide grounds for such service in MK.
Beneficiary countries (SI, HR, MK) have established optimised and tailor-made protocols for controlled mating as tool for selection in honey bees together with infrastructure and knowledge of the expert partners where such systems have been in existence more than 40 years (NO).
Project Partners assessed the current situation regarding mating control and its economics through surveys and individual interviews. The project offered and communicated tailor-made and ready-to-use solutions for mating control, tried in the field, and verified through series of modelling.
Through targeted series of lectures and workshops the project partners have presented the issue to the stakeholders; including government bodies in charge of legislation.
The knowledge of the donor and expert partner was successfully transferred. Consequently, the partners reached higher level of independence in managing tailor made solutions at the local and regional level.
Summary of bilateral results
As the partners realised that common challenges exist and that the required knowledge was lacking in their countries they approached the donor partner and invited the Norwegian Beekeepers Association (NBA) to teach them. The NBA was key to developing the project proposal and implementing the project.Dr Dahle (NBA) first described the Norwegian best practises and led the discussion on which could be transferred to countries of the project and which could be adopted. This led to a successful project application.As part of the project, NBA organised workshops for both project partners and stakeholders. Partners jointly developed several field practises and identified sites/methods that have led to successful outcomes. The consortiants jointly published several scientific papers and carried out dissemination activities. The knowledge transfer within the BeeConSel project was two-way, as the NBA participated in a number of experiments that also shed light on the situation in Norway. Last but not least, the partners performed an analyses of the existing legislation in the donor and recipient countries and proposed several changes on both sides.