UC project funded with 6 million euros to increase the resilience of beekeeping

The University of Coimbra (UC) is part of an international project that aims to increase the resilience of beekeeping to abiotic stressors, such as climate change, habitat loss, and chemical compounds, namely pesticides.

José Paulo Sousa, the researcher at the Center for Functional Ecology of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the UC (FCTUC), is the coordinator of the “Better-B” project at the UC, now awarded around 6 million euros.

«Colonies of honeybees are often poorly adapted to deal with these stressors, largely due to modern beekeeping practices», says the researcher, revealing that «the key to resilient beekeeping is to harness the “power of nature “to restore harmony and balance within the colonies and between the colonies and the environment, both disturbed by human activities».

According to José Paulo Sousa, the solution is to «understand the processes and mechanisms that apply in nature and adapt modern beekeeping practices and decision-making accordingly, and when appropriate, using the benefits of advanced technologies». So, over the next four years, researchers will address different types of stressors through monitoring, experimentation, and ecological modeling.

Within the scope of the “Better-B” project, an «assessment of the quality of floral resources in different habitats will be carried out, as well as the interactions between plant-pollinator, in order to better understand the phenomena of competition between honey bees and wild pollinator species in situations of abundance and scarcity of resources, resorting to monitoring and experimentation», explains the also professor at FCTUC.

According to the consortium, the collected data will serve to feed models to evaluate the “carrying capacity” of different types of habitats and, also, to develop decision-making tools on how to improve the structure of the habitat in terms of food resources and balance the beekeeping activity and conservation/increase of pollinator biodiversity.

The “Better-B” team will also assess the impact of «landscape complexity and pesticide contamination on the performance of colonies», using evaluation methods developed and tested within the scope of the “B-Good” project, of which FCTUC is part and has the overall aim of providing guidance to beekeepers and helping them make better and more informed decisions. «The effects of certain abiotic factors on sensitivity to pesticides will be evaluated, carrying out ecotoxicological tests with honeybees to assess lethal and sub-lethal effects. The UC is the only higher education institution in Portugal to carry out this type of test», emphasizes the FCTUC professor.

This project will also evaluate the impact of Vespa velutina nigrithorax, also known as the Asian wasp, on bee colonies. «Here, we will use monitoring methods and it will be an extension of two UC projects in partnership with the inter-municipal communities of the regions of Coimbra and Viseu-Dão-Lafões», concludes José Paulo Sousa.

“Better-B” is a project funded by Horizonte Europa and brings together 17 institutions from countries such as Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Romania, and Sweden.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and TikTok and see the exclusive content for social networks.