Study on the impact of land use on recent bee colony losses presented at LIST

On Saturday, 17th January 2015, bee keepers and collaborators of veterinary and agricultural administrations of Luxembourg met at LIST to join a presentation of results from the project BeeFirst.

Land use data recorded in summer were analysed for relationships with bee colony losses observed in the following winter. Sixty out of 137 land use classes were repeatedly associated with bee losses. Out of these 60 land use classes, 17 were related to agriculture and 43 to other human activities such as transport, leisure and industry. Twelve out of the 17 agricultural land use forms related to bee losses were coupled with high bee colony losses, while 5 were associated with low bee colony losses. Out of the 43 land use classes not related to agriculture, 36 were associated with high bee losses and 6 with low colony losses. These results suggest that the impact of human activities related to transport, leisure and industry were recently underestimated compared with the impact of agriculture. After a lively discussion, the participants agreed to pursue selected aspects of the recent bee decline in a follow-up project.