Anna M. Gajda1, Gina Retschnig2, Maria Bouga1, Robert Brodschneider1, Norman L. Carreck1, Panuwan Chantawannakul1, Raffaele Dall’Olio1, Vincent Dietemann1, Ales Gregorc1, Lotta Fabricius Kristiansen1, Daniela Laurino1, Aslı Özkirim1, Christian W.W. Pirk1, Victoria Soroker1, Geoffrey R. Williams1 & Peter Neumann1
1 COLOSS Executive Committee, www.coloss.org
2 Institute of Bee Health, Vetsuisse Faculty, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Introduction
Honey bee colonies are an essential provider of ecosystem services, and are among the most important productive animals worldwide. Unacceptable losses of managed western honey bee Apis mellifera colonies have been observed in many countries. It became apparent that countries cannot easily solve this problem individually, and that there was an urgent need to address the lack of comparable data on rising colony loss rates among and between different countries. As a result, in 2008 COLOSS (the prevention of honey bee COlony LOSSes network) was initiated, funded by the European Union COST Programme (Action FA0803) (2008-2012). After 2012, COLOSS was consolidated into an international, non-profit association headquartered in Bern, Switzerland, funded by: the Ricola Foundation Nature & Culture (the main sponsor); the Eva Crane Trust; Veto-Pharma; IBRA (International Bee Research Association), the University of Bern; and many local sponsors for individual events (Brodschneider et al. 2022).
COLOSS is composed of scientific professionals that include researchers, veterinarians, agriculture extension specialists and students. However, members cannot be involved in producing substances that are harmful to bees. To date, COLOSS has 1,857 members from 105 countries, and is still growing (Fig. 1).
Mission and Goals
The actions of the association are based on the realization that cooperation and open dialogue are key to a better understanding of the reasons why bee populations are threatened in today’s world. The mission of COLOSS is to improve the well-being of bees (in particular the western honey bee A. mellifera) at a global level. To achieve this, COLOSS advocates for honey bee well-being, especially to government legislators and administrators. Moreover it coordinates international research, including the development of standard research methods and disseminates gathered knowledge related to improving the well-being of bees. Promoting youth development and gender balance amongst those studying, or those actively involved in promoting the well-being of bees is an important part of COLOSS’s work. Since 2021, COLOSS annually awards grants to support the work of early-stage researchers, with a special focus on students from developing countries, to encourage young minds to dig deeper, and to promote innovative and sustainable beekeeping solutions. COLOSS is also a frame for networking of members for their research activities and global collaboration and establishing their complementary approaches.
The association works towards those goals by investigating themes of interest:
- Pests & Pathogens (e.g. Varroa destructor & viruses)
- Environmental effects (e.g. Pesticides & nutrition)
- Breeding & Conservation (e.g. Diversity & disease resistance)
- Bridging Research and Practice (eg. improved practices of research outcomes)
COLOSS achieves this through its Regional Representatives and its Core Projects and Task Forces – specific topics identified by the association to receive priority attention (Fig. 2).
COLOSS facilitates networking between its members through its annual international conferences (Fig. 3.), workshops, training schools, shared protocols, joint large-scale experiments and international monitoring programs. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, in person meetings were replaced by virtual ones. Local virtual / hybrid meetings have taken place in Africa, Asia, North America, South America and Oceania. In particular, COLOSS Asia has been a true success in Okinawa, Japan. The next Asian-Oceanian meeting is planned to take place in Hangzhou, China in 2022. With all the negative impacts of the Covid-19 on research and networking activities (D’All Olio et al. 2020), COLOSS adjusted its activities to fit Covid-19 challenges. Joining in person meetings with online ones allows many more members to take part, without the costs of travel or accommodation, which can sometimes be a large barrier to scientific networking, especially to young members from developing countries.
COLOSS activities
From the beginning of COLOSS, it became apparent that shared standard protocols are essential to enable the direct comparison of data between laboratories and countries. This led to the birth of the COLOSS BEEBOOK, a manual for standard methods in honey bee research. In three dedicated volumes to date (https://coloss.org/beebook/), international author teams explain research methods in a simple, step-by-step basis, enabling the generation of data that are comparable across laboratories. The BEEBOOK articles are freely available and continuously evolving, with regular updates occurring as new methods arise. Recently, the BEEBOOK has expanded to include research on the eastern honey bee, Apis cerana, and “omics” (genomics, proteomics, etc.).
A very important outcome of COLOSS’s work has been the multitude of scientific publications deriving from international cooperation on different topics. This cooperation is best represented by three multi-country projects: the CSI (Citizen Science Investigation) Pollen study; the GEI (Genotype-Environment Interaction) experiment; and the Colony Loss Monitoring core project, which is ongoing with yearly data collection since the creation of COLOSS.
CSI Pollen has been the largest pollen sampling experiment in history (Brodschneider et al., 2021). It significantly helped to understand the diversity of pollen forage available to honey bees. In this study, 750 citizen scientist beekeepers from 24 countries collected almost 18,000 pollen samples, which they recorded for color diversity. These results measured by beekeepers were analyzed by the Task Force members, who found that pollen diversity is positively influenced by ‘urban’ habitats or ‘artificial surfaces’, respectively. This was shown with the help of many beekeepers, and in contrast to other targeted studies, for established apiary sites and over a very wide geographical range covering large parts of Europe. Finally, this activity for the first time introduced citizen science to the broad honey bee science community.
The colony loss monitoring project includes more than 30 participating countries, and the number of member countries is continually increasing (Gray et al., 2020). Many thousands of beekeepers take part each year, a great example for crowdsourcing; the voluntary participation of many beekeepers enabling much wider scale data collection than would otherwise be possible. Each country carries 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 Winter colony loss rates between countries, and to use the international data collected to better understand 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. The publications resulting from this project not only produced internationally comparable loss rates of honey bee colonies for the first time, but have also used advanced statistical modeling to investigate risk factors.
The pan-European Genotype-Environment-Interactions Experiment aimed to estimate the importance of genotype-environment interactions on the vitality and performance of honey bees (Meixner et al., 2014). It ran between 2009 and 2012, and the experiment included 621 colonies from 16 different genetic origins belonging to five A. mellifera subspecies (carnica, ligustica, macedonica, mellifera, siciliana). It took place in 21 locations managed by 15 COLOSS partners in 11 European countries, ranging from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, and across Central Europe to the Balkans. The study provided an insight into the complex mechanisms of adaptation and the relative importance of environment and genetic origin on colony vitality. The data collected in this experiment demonstrated that “local” bees survive better than bees introduced from elsewhere, and also permitted a preliminary view of disease presence in several European countries. Overall, this experiment showed that it is worthwhile to continue work towards the conservation of locally adapted honey bee populations.
Bridging Research and Practice (B-RAP) as a core project within COLOSS was established to translate research outcomes into beekeeping. Analysis of colony loss has often indicated gaps in knowledge transfer between science and apiculture. Bridging research and practice is thus one major goal of COLOSS. B-RAP is a core project composed of both extensionists and scientists from many countries who are working towards understanding the local needs and ways for improvements in information transfer.
It is vital that outcomes and conclusions of COLOSS activities are transferred in a clear way through channels most used by beekeepers. In order to determine the best way to reach them, the B-RAP Core Project members conducted a global survey that focused on where beekeepers obtain information, on different aspects of beekeeping practice and which sources of information they prefer. For this, an online questionnaire was created, which was available in 25 languages between May 2020 and February 2021. A total of 11,351 beekeepers from 98 countries answered the online questionnaire. Preferences for the type of information source differed significantly between continents. A deeper understanding of where information is most frequently retrieved by beekeepers allows beekeeping advisors and bee researchers to adapt their communication strategies accordingly. We believe this will result in improved and more effective communication between researchers / advisors and beekeepers on a global scale, and thus facilitate the adoption of new techniques and knowledge in various beekeeping sectors, for improved honey bee management and health.
The outcomes of research are translated and explained to beekeepers during numerous training courses, conferences and other beekeeper-oriented events. COLOSS members author many popular articles in beekeeping journals (both national and international) with the same purpose. COLOSS also distributes bee health news, events, jobs, and scientific articles that are relevant to to stakeholders via the web, e-mail, and Facebook®.
Many joint projects have been realized, and numerous collaborations have developed across national borders. This successful development of COLOSS in recent years, and the great response the network has received from the scientific community, is a huge opportunity for the field. It is a great example that only together can we find sustainable solutions to improve the well-being of bees.
If you want to know more about our activities, take a look at the freely available Bee World Special Issue on COLOSS (Bee World, Volume 99, Issue 1 (2022)).
Bibliography:
Brodschneider, R., Ellis J. & Neumann, P. (2022) A Special Issue on COLOSS, Bee World, 99:1, 1-4, https://doi.org/10.1080/0005772X.2022.2019377
Brodschneider, R., Kalcher-Sommersguter, E., Kuchling, S., Dietemann, V., Gray, A., Božič, J., Briedis, A., Carreck, N.L., Chlebo, R., Crailsheim, K., Coffey, M.F., Dahle, B., Gonzalez-Porto, A.V., Filipi, J., de Graaf, D.C., Hatjina, F., Ioannidis, P., Ion, N., Joergensen, A.S., Kristiansen, P., Lecocq, A., Odoux, J-F., Özkirim, A., Peterson, M., Podrižnik, B., Rašić, S., Retschnig, G., Schiesser, A., Tosi, S., Vejsnaes, F., Williams, G., van der Steen, J.J.F. (2021) CSI Pollen: Diversity of honey bee collected pollen studied by citizen scientists. Insects, 12(11): 987. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects12110987
Dall’Olio, R., Blacquiere, T., Bouga, M., Brodschneider, R., Carreck, N.L., Chantawannakul, P., Dietemann, V., Kristiansen, L.F., Gajda, A., Gregorc, A., Özkirim, A., Pirk, C., Soroker, V., Williams, G.R., Neumann, P. (2020) COLOSS survey: global impact of COVID-19 on bee research. Journal of Apicultural Research, 59(5): 731-734. https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2020.1799646
Gray, A., Adjlane, N., Arab, A., Ballis, A., Brusbardis, V., Charrière, J.D., Chlebo, R., Coffey, M.F., Cornelissen, B., da Costa, C.A., Dahle, B., Danihlík, J., Dražić, M.M., Evans, G., Fedoriak, M., Forsythe, I., Gajda, A., de Graaf, D.C., Gregorc, A., Ilieva, I., Johannesen, J., Kauko, L., Kristiansen, P., Martikkala, M., Martín-Hernández, R., Medina-Flores, C.A., Mutinelli, F., Patalano, S., Raudmets, A., Martin, G.S., Soroker, V., Stevanovic, J., Uzunov, A., Vejsnaes, F., Williams, A., Zammit-Mangion, M., Brodschneider, R. (2020) Honey bee colony winter loss rates for 35 countries participating in the COLOSS survey for winter 2018–2019, and the effects of a new queen on the risk of colony winter loss. Journal of Apicultural Research, 59(5): 744-751. https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2020.1797272
Meixner, M.D., Büchler, R., Costa, C., Francis, R., Hatjina, F., Kryger, P., Uzunov, A., Carreck, N.L. (2014) Honey bee genotypes and the environment. Journal of Apicultural Research 53(2), 183-187. http://dx.doi.org/10.3896/IBRA.1.53.2.01
