Bio-monitoring of environmental pollution using the citizen science approach
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Honeybee colonies are excellent bio-samplers of biological material such as nectar,
pollen, and plant pathogens, as well as non-biological material such as pesticides or
airborne contamination. The INSIGNIA-EU project aims to design and test an innovative,
non-invasive, scientifically proven citizen science environmental monitoring protocol for
the detection of pesticides, microplastics, heavy metals, and air pollutants by honey bee
colonies http://insignia-eu.eu. In the pilot INSIGNIA project (2018-2021), a protocol was
developed and tested for citizen-science-based monitoring of pesticides using honeybees.
As part of the project, biweekly pollen was obtained from sentinel apiaries over a range of
European countries and landscapes and analysed for botanical origin, using state-of-theart
molecular techniques such as metabarcoding. An innovative non-biological matrix, the
“APIStrip”, was also proved to be very efficient for detecting the residues of 273 agricultural
pesticides and veterinary products, both authorized and unauthorized. The data collected
are used to develop and test a spatial modelling system aimed at predicting the spatiallyexplicit
environmental fate of pesticides and honeybee landscape-scale pollen foraging,
with a common underlying geo-database containing European land-use and land-cover
data (CORINE), the LUCAS database (landcover) supplemented with national data sets on
agricultural and (semi-) natural habitats.
After a call by the European Commission, a new 2 years project was granted aiming to
present a comprehensive pan-European environmental pollution monitoring study with
honey bees. Although pesticides used in agriculture, are a known hazard due to their
biological activity, other pollutants, have even been recognized as such, for which we
have not been aware of their impact for many years. An example is air pollution which
increased while our societies industrialized and is currently regarded as the single largest
environmental health risk in Europe (https://www.eea.europa.eu/). Unfortunately, other
pollutants such as heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated
biphenyls, airborne particulate matter, and microplastics have also reached our
environment. The outcome of this project will provide the first standardized EU-wide
monitoring of all types of environmental pollutants with honey bee colonies. The project is
funded by the EU, under the N° 09.200200/2021/864096/SER/ ENV.D.2 contract.
