RDE347 - Pesticides in honey - residue analysis on NHMS honey samples collected

Pollinators have been identified as a priority to the pesticides policy hub, other Defra policy teams and wider stakeholders. However, UK pollinators are in decline. Pollinating insects play an important role in ecosystems and provide a crucial service to the agricultural, horticultural, and gardening sectors. Pollinators provide approximately £0.5 billion to the UK in ecosystem services from agricultural yield improvements alone (Steele et al., 2019). However, pollinators are vulnerable to impacts from pesticide use, which has been shown to influence bee behavior and survival (Stanley et al., 2015). In addition to honeybees, there are at least 1500 species of insect pollinators in the UK including c. 250 species of bee. Honeybees are normally managed in hives by beekeepers, although wild colonies can exist. Others, like many species of bumblebees, solitary bees, moths, butterflies and hoverflies, live in the wild. Additional data and research are required to understand the impact of pesticides on honeybees and other pollinators. This is particularly true for understanding the post regulatory approval exposure risk seen by honeybees under real world field conditions which are hard to predict in the conventional ecotoxicology phases of the regulatory process.

Contract was awarded by Defra.