Giving Beekeeping Guidance by cOmputatiOnal-assisted Decision making
B-GOOD paves the way towards healthy and sustainable beekeeping within the European Union by following a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach. In order to be able to provide guidance for beekeepers and help them make better and more informed decisions, having sufficient expertise across partners is essential. Therefore, B-GOOD brings together highly-qualified scientists, who are recognised experts in the fields of apiculture, bee physiology and pathology, assay development, ecology,...
Project partners and multi-actor forum members of the B-GOOD project met up on the 16th and 17th of January 2023 in Schkopau (Halle), Germany. The two-day event was hosted by project partner the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and entailed informative presentations, in-depth discussions, workshops, as well as an overview of the projects’ developments and expected outcomes. The first day of the event invited B-GOOD beekeepers to share their experiences, while the second...
B-GOOD's 8th Consortium Meeting will take place on 16 & 17 January 2023. Project partners will meet up in Schkopau, Germany to discuss project progress & future actions. The participants will go over B-GOOD’s latest updates and will participate in a workshop to discuss different aspects of sustainable beekeeping, both environmental and financial. The meeting will be hybrid - in person and online - and all sessions will be in English. Follow us on our social media...
Are you curious to know what B-GOOD has achieved in the past year? In our new video, we take a look back to appreciate some of our greater accomplishments. With this video, we also want to thank all the B-GOOD members for the hard work and to our audience, for supporting us throughout the year. We can’t wait to see what 2023 will bring us! Enjoy the video:
A new B-GOOD video titled "Lateral flow device for neonicotinoid contamination screening" shows the application of the lateral flow devices (LFDs) for detection of the presence of pesticides. B-GOOD partners of University of Coimbra and Wageningen Food Safety Research (WFSR) tested the LFDs’ ability to detect neonicotinoids under laboratory and field conditions in several honey bee colony components - nectar, honey, pollen, beebread. Furthermore, they assessed their...
Recently, B-GOOD partner Dr. Alexis Beaurepaire of University of Bern was invited to speak about the project on the French television programme Forum. Forum is daily show on RTS TV that questions actors and players on high-priority themes of current common interest, opening the debate on the controversies that animate the political, cultural and economic life. Photo: Dr. Alexis Beaurepaire on the French television programme Forum Alexis gave an overview of the project and its...
The first part of the 18th COLOSS Conference took place online on 17-18 October. The two-part 2022 e-gathering consists of 2 days full of workshops and a main event, which will be held on 2-3 November. COLOSS (Prevention of honey bee COlony LOSSes) is an international, non-profit association headquartered in Bern, Switzerland that is focused on improving the well-being of bees at a global level. It is composed of scientific professionals that include researchers, veterinarians, agriculture...
The European Research Executive Agency (REA) hosted a workshop on 10. October to examinе the current pollinator situation, pinpoint substantial knowledge gaps, as well as their potential solutions resulting from EU-funded projects supporting pollinators. A welcome speech by Paul Webb of the REA was followed by discussions on the insights gained from the EU's international research initiatives and most important next steps for both research and policy. Sofie Hofkens...
The 9th European Congress of Apidology (EurBee9) took place from 19-22 September 2022 in Belgrade, Serbia. This year’s edition of the conference was convened under the motto "Save the bees for our future" and welcomed scientists from Europe and far beyond to exchange recent advancements and ideas that emerge from basic and applied research. The conference aims to foster the exchange of knowledge and international collaboration and to enable researchers, instructors,...
On the 14-15th of September 2022, the 182nd Seminar on "Sustainability via biodiverse agri-food value chains" (EAAE) took place in Chania, Crete at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania. The event with the theme ‘Sustainability via biodiverse agri-food value chain’ brought together scholars and researchers, amongst whom were several B-GOOD partners. In a rapidly changing environment where wildfires, desertification and floods, disease outbreaks, increasing trade costs,...
Complex model documentation has long been a challenge since currently used methods involve reviewers too late in the process, often not allowing them to flag issues or suggest redesigns before the analysis is finished. The Formal Model, introduced recently in the open access journal Food and Ecological Systems Modelling Journal (FESMJ), aims to improve transparency and provide a formal approach to documentation. Reviewers can help improve the model by identifying problems early. The Formal...
A new research paper featuring B-GOOD partner and WP5 leader Prof. Christopher John Topping was recently published in the journal Nature Communication, and sheds light on the pesticide effects on honey bees. The publication titled "A deeper understanding of system interactions can explain contradictory field results on pesticide impact on honey bees", puts forward a research, explaining the contrasting field results regarding the harm of toxic compounds on honey bee health and...
B-GOOD’s main goal is to support beekeepers in maintaining healthy and sustainable bee colonies. In order to promote their invaluable work and part in B-GOOD, we launched a new webpage on the project website devoted to our #BeekeeperStories social media campaign.The #BeekeeperStories campaign tells the stories of different B-GOOD beekeepers in an effort to emphasize the value, opportunities, and difficulties of beekeeping. The posts, shared on Facebook and Twitter on a weekly basis, can...
Meet Vincent Louis, a Swiss beekeeper living in Geneva, on the new #BeekeeperStories instalment! Vincent started beekeeping 5 years ago in a hobby group within an industrial company. Two years later, he had the opportunity to acquire his own apiary from a beekeeper who had to urgently leave the country. It took him less than five minutes to make the decision without even realising that he lives in an apartment and has no garden to set the colonies. Fortunately, he was lucky enough to find...
A new publication focusing on the Lateral Flow Device (LFD) developed within B-GOOD is now available. The article titled "Biosensing Chlorpyrifos in Environmental Water Samples by a Newly Developed Carbon Nanoparticle-Based Indirect Lateral Flow Assay" has been published in Biosensors - the international, peer-reviewed, open access journal on the technology and science of biosensors. The authors of the article, amongst whom B-GOOD researchers Mang Xu and Jeroen Peters of Wageningen...
#BeekeeperStories is back on Twitter & Facebook! In the eight feature of the series, we present to you Bas Sprengers. Bas is a 35-year-old beekeeper from the Netherlands. He has always been fascinated by insects. Before starting beekeeping, he used to keep ants in a formicarium. In 2016, after getting his driver’s licence, he bought second-hand beekeeping equipment from a retired beekeeper and since that day he’s had between 1-14 hives. Bas says that he loves spending time...
The 47th edition of the Apimondia International Apicultural Congress took place from 24-28 August 2022 in Istanbul, Turkey. For the first time, three major symposia have been organised with the participation of world-recognised specialists speaking about the most relevant themes in apiculture. This year, the congress was organised in hybrid format, by livestreaming scientific sessions in the virtual platform. Apimondia is the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations. Its...
Our campaign #BeekeeperStories on Twitter & Facebook continues! The next feature is Dirk-Jan (DJ) Valkenburg, a B-GOOD researcher for Wageningen University & Research (WR), who is also participating in the project as a Tier 3 beekeeper.From early childhood, DJ remembers being fascinated by people wearing bee suits. He always knew he wanted to become a beekeeper in the future, but thought he would have more time for that when he’s older. But then fate played its part and he got a...
Each year, millions of bees travel thousands of miles - not on their wings but via the highway or postal services. In the new B-GOOD video titled "Express Delivery of B-GOOD Samples", B-GOOD Tier 2 beekeeper Norman Thürmer shows us the rather unusual manner in which he transports his bees. Photo: Norman Thürmer transporting his bees on his plane The video created by Norman himself presents the delivery of the samples from his beehives in Magdeburg, Germany to the...