May FREE-B: New research project investigates survival of wild honey bees across Europe

An international research project has been launched to uncover how wild honey bee colonies survive and thrive in the wild across Europe’s diverse landscapes.

The project is being announced to mark World Bee Day today (Tuesday May 20), highlighting the importance of wild bees and their role in biodiversity.

Led by University of Galway, with support from the Environmental Protection Agency, the FREE-B project is aimed at safeguarding honey bee biodiversity, improving resilience and driving transformative change in beekeeping, by bringing together researchers from Ireland, France, Poland, Portugal and Sweden to explore the survival tactics of free-living honey bees (Apis mellifera).

Once thought to be extinct in the wild, recent independent research has revealed that free-living honey bee exist in some parts of Europe, including Ireland.

However, how they are able to survive in the wild and whether they can form a stable populations in remote forests remains largely unknown.

FREE-B seeks to address this knowledge gap by investigating the biological, behavioural, and environmental factors that bolster survival of these colonies.

Professor Grace McCormack, School of Natural Sciences, University of Galway, said: “We have been monitoring free-living honey bee colonies across the island of Ireland since 2015 and have found excellent overwintering survival in this group. There is a high proportion of pure native Irish honey bee in the wild population and our research so far suggests that they do not have any higher levels of pests or diseases than managed colonies. Being well adapted to local conditions they may hold key secrets that could improve apiculture in Ireland. Indeed, many beekeepers already rely on wild colonies to bolster their beekeeping, particularly beekeepers who no longer use chemicals to treat for the parasitic varroa mite.

“We look forward to extending our research via FREE-B to investigate broader patterns of survival in this key group across different latitudes and climates, to diving deeper to understand what goes on in a wild nest throughout the season, and to sharing exciting research outputs with beekeepers.”

Teams from the five European countries will search for nest sites in collaboration with citizen scientists and the international coalition Honey Bee Watch, with a special focus on forested and remote areas. In addition to gathering information about the colonies, such as location, nest type, and density, they will also conduct regular monitoring of nests to track survival rates.

Researchers will then assess landscape effects on colony survival and analyse genetic and morphologic data to evaluate diversity and adaptation to varying environments from Portugal to Sweden.

In addition, pest and pathogen loads will be compared to those found in managed hives to better understand if wild populations better tolerate or resist disease, while investigations of pollen usage will determine if wild colonies utilise different forage compared to managed colonies.

In Ireland and Poland, FREE-B will pilot the potential harnessing of free-living honey bee colonies to produce locally resilient honey bee stocks by testing whether swarms collected from these colonies can be successfully managed in treatment-free apiaries. The team will measure various factors to assess their viability for future beekeeping, including disease, over winter survival, and honey production.

            Steve Rogenstein, Project Director of Honey Bee Watch, said: "What excites us most is that, with Biodiversa's support of FREE-B, some of Europe's leading researchers of free-living honey bees, from Iberia to Scandinavia and spanning Western and Eastern Europe too, are coming together to extensively collect and analyse data collaboratively and from a multidisciplinary perspective. We hope that this international effort will provide insights as to how and why wild populations survive, and that any nature-based solutions that we collectively devise and implement will benefit both the bees as well as beekeepers in the five participating countries and beyond."

FREE-B is a collaboration between researchers at University of Galway; Kazimierz Wielki University, Poland; Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Portugal; IRD, University Paris-Saclay, France; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Swenen, and Honey Bee Watch, Ireland.

Findings from the project will be shared with a wide range of stakeholders including beekeepers, policymakers, veterinarians and foresters, who may have direct or indirect effects on the well-being of these bee populations.

Researchers will also share insights with beekeepers to help reduce mortality rates and improve sustainability in beekeeping.

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