Faculty of Agrobiology and Food Resources

Workshops of beekeepers expersts at the SUA

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From 5. to 8. February 2018, two consecutive workshops of the COLOSS international honeybee research association took place at the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra.

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. COLOSS was funded by the EU COST project till 2012, but because of great success, the participants continue to cooperate in solving and understanding of current threats of beekeeping. At present, this scientific consortium has more than 1000 members from 95 countries worldwide. The Association is composed of scientific professionals that include researchers, veterinarians, agriculture extension specialists and students.

Goals of the Association include:

  • Advocating for bees, and their well-being, especially to government legislators and administrators.
  • Coordinating international research, including the development of standard research methods.
  • Disseminating knowledge and training related to improving the well-being of bees.
  • Promoting youth development and gender balance among those studying, or those actively involved in promoting, the well-being of bees.

The Association work towards our mission and goals by structuring our association into themes of interest:

  • Pests & Pathogens (e.g. Varroa destructor & viruses)
  • Environment (e.g. Pesticides & nutrition)
  • Breeding & Conservation (e.g. diversity & disease resistance)

Furthermore, COLOSS endorses core projects and tasks forces – specific topics identified by our association to receive priority attention.

One of the greatest successes of this Association is a unique venture that aims to standardize methods for studying the honey bee – publishing practical manual compiling standard methods in all fields of research on the honey bee, Apis mellifera. The COLOSS BEEBOOK project is divided into three volumes: Standard methods for Apis mellifera research; Standard methods for Apis mellifera pest and pathogen research; and Standard methods for Apis mellifera product research. Papers are published in a Special Issues of the Journal of Apicultural Research as Open Access papers and are available also in printed book version.

The Slovak University of Agriculture, through its national coordinator (doc. Ing. Róbert Chlebo, PhD.) actively performs in several core projects, joint publications are currently planned under the "C.S.I. Pollen " and " Colony losses monitoring " groups.

“C.S.I. Pollen”, a Coloss project, aims to be the largest investigation on pollen diversity available to honey bee colonies in Europe. http://www.coloss.org/c-s-i-pollen/.

In „Colony losses monitoring“ group (http://www.coloss.org/colony-losses-monitoring/) participating countries each carry out an annual survey of beekeepers by questionnaire, with the aim of collecting information from a nationally representative sample of beekeepers. This makes it possible to compare colony loss rates between countries and to use the international data collected to understand better the risk factors for colony loss. To enable proper comparisons, a standardized beekeeper questionnaire was developed and is updated each year by the group for use by each country. Updating of the questionnaire for a new monitoring season 2017/2018 using LimeSurvey on-line tool was the main purpose of the workshop held in Nitra from 7. to 8. February 2018. Talks on bee colony losses in individual countries and various approaches of their statistical evaluation were presented. Issues of joint publications and further activities of this group have also been discussed.

The workshop was attended by 19 participants from Austria, Denmark, Sweden, England, Scotland, Belgium, Finland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Hungary, Czech republic, Israel, Macedonia, Switzerland and Italy.

Prior to the Monitoring group workshop another COLOSS group workshop was organised from 5. to 6. February 2018. More information about „B-Rap“ Core Group activities you can find at http://www.coloss.org/b-rap-bridging-research-and-practice/. In total 13 apiculture experts from 11European countries discussed how to effectively bridge beekeeping science into practice. This Core Project is focused on ensuring that learning & understanding generated reaches the beekeepers and leads to modified practice.

A total of 4 days we spent in discussions, in the evenings we have found time also for visiting famous Slovak meaderies of Apimed, Včelco and Tomka companies, where participants had the opportunity to learn the technology of mead production and to taste the well-known types of mead, awarded by many international awards and trophies.

The local organizer of this event was the Department of Poultry Science and Small Farm Animals of the Faculty of Agrobiology and Food Resources, represented by a coordinator of the COLOSS activities in Slovakia, doc. Róbert Chlebo, PhD. We would like to thank the SUA and the Faculty management for creating excellent conditions for the organization of these workshops as well as to the Slovak Beekeepers Association for financial assistance.

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