In their natural environment, bees may be exposed to a wide range of stressors which affect their health and, in turn, honey production and pollination which are important components of sustainable agriculture and food security.

The importance of this issue is reflected in the number of research projects conducted by member states as well as under EU Research Framework Programmes 6 and 7 in the areas of bee health and pollination.

These projects have contributed to the progress made in the knowledge about bee biology, bee health and the role of bees on delivering pollination services. However, there remain major gaps in our understanding of how different stressors can affect bees and on the interactions between stressors; furthermore, gaps exists in our capacity to effectively monitor the health status of bees, and, consequentially, the effectiveness of apiculture and the role of the various bee species as providers of ecosystem services .

The European Food Safety Agency constituted in 2012 a multidisciplinary task force (“EFSA bee task force”) to identify cross-cutting issues, gaps in knowledge, research needs, and provide recommendations for the environmental risk assessment of multiple stressors on bees for risk managers and policy makers based on the most recent developments in the area of bee health. EFSA issued several reports and launched the MUST-B project (see more).

Alongside this taskforce, the EC through its Horizon 2020 programme plans to fund more research projects on the issue of bee health. In this context, DG AGRI requested EFSA’s collaboration to organise a scientific workshop on bee health and pollination to support the identification of areas for possible research under Horizon 2020. Also, the workshop aimed at enhancing collaboration to avoid duplication of resources and work in the EU.

During the workshop which took place on 10th March 2016, based on the results presented from the EC projects and following an expert knowledge elicitation approach, 18 recommendations were ranked according to two criteria: (i) to promote apiculture and sustainable pollination and (ii) to increase understanding of the bee biology and interactions at the ecosystem level. The results showed a large variation in expert opinions. The discussions are reflected in the workshop report .

The research recommendation with the highest average priority concerns the need for data for chemical risk assessment (i.e. residue levels in bee matrices, species sensitivity, dose-response relationships, toxicokinetics, toxicodynamics for chemicals, contaminants and veterinary products, and metabolites) in different bee life stages/castes/sexes and under different conditions (e.g. diet, temperature).

Prioritising research recommendations is not an easy task. Issues are often interrelated and to achieve an objective and demonstrate hypothesis, tools and methods need to be developed. The objective of the scientific workshop was to develop and discuss research recommendations on bee health and sustainable pollination, which is a very large area including many different animal species and different kinds of societal impacts.

The conclusions on the identified top priorities cannot be seen as a definite answer but as a contribution for further reflection on what research is still necessary.