While these methods have been affective, they rely on enough bees being dosed and spreading the miticide around the colony in an even manner and they don’t prevent foraging bees from bringing new mites in when they come home to the hive each day.
Bayer has a Bee Care centre at its R&D headquarters in Monheim Germany and is building a second in the US.
Bayer is running field trials, in their third year, where 30 beehives are studied under field conditions to evaluate the effect of dietary long-term exposure to sub-lethal levels of the insecticide Thiacloprid on the exposed colonies.
“The study will be on-going, but we have not seen any negative effects yet.”
Varroa is another large area of research. Innovative products like the varroa gate have been developed, with other technical solutions to control the mite.
The centre is also supporting the creation of bee foraging habitats in urban areas and investigating measures to enhance biodiversity of pollinators in the agricultural landscape.
There was a huge global need for crop protection products as well as crop pollinators and Bayer strived to balance the risk and the need by extensive testing, risk assessment and product stewardship measures, Maus said.
- Jackie Harrigan travelled to Monheim Germany courtesy of Bayer Crop Science.
