2016/01/01 by André Kretzschmar, Alban Maisonnasse, Kretzschmar, André +7
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #0 #Abeilles #Apiaries #Bee Products Chemical Analysis #Honeybees #Insect and Pesticide Research #Meat and Animal Product Quality #Observatoire #Performance #Population #Ruchers #Surveyx
paper · doi:10.15454/1.5137716161972214e12
openalex publication_date 2016/01/01 · openalex created_date 2020/09/11 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The decline of wild or domestic bees is a field of controversy that research must nurture by proposing a link between science and society. One of the major difficulties in the description of dysfunctions of bee colonies is the great variability related to the various parameters describing the state and operation of the colonies. The Observatory of the honeydew on Lavander is a method to take account of this variability in real situation. To do this, the observatory on Lavander is based on the monitoring of 300 to 600 colonies per year (24 apiaries, 14 to 29 colonies per apiary) for 8 years (2009-2016). These apiaries belong to professional beekeepers. Weight gain ("GP") is the variable of interest that has been defined to describe the functioning of colonies. This variable was studied in the framework of a general model which is written: Weight gain ~ function (Resources + Population + Health status + variability) The size of this observatory makes it possible to absorb the variability of the performances of the colonies (= «GP») and to investigate the factors that govern the annual, regional or local variations of this performance, with a particular focus on the parameters that are under the control of the beekeeper. Once the variation between regions, years and apiaries is described, the description of the population structure of the colonies reveals the essential role of the quantity of capped and open brood to the establishment of colonies on the honeydew. It also shows the penalizing nature of the performance of too many bees and of the space occupied by the reserves. This analysis concludes that the performance of the colonies is dependent on a colonial strategy: "dynamic" or "conservative". The most important health factor, penalizing performance, is the load in varroas. A critical threshold for these observations is defined. In addition, the observatory studied the diversity of exposure to pesticides by analyzing the pollen harvested by the colonies on Lavander for three years. A transhumance experiment in contrasting pesticide exposure conditions highlights the complexity of the performance response to this exposure. And the specific role of pesticide cocktails encountered in pollens observed on the observatory is also described by the response of developing larvae.