Norman Carreck

University of Sussex · Department of Evolution, Behaviour and Environment

Since 2013 the European Commission has restricted the use of three neonicotinoid insecticides as seed dressings on bee-attractive crops. Such crops represent an important source of forage for bees, which is often scarce in agro-ecosystems. However, this benefit has often been overlooked in the design of previous field studies, leaving the net impac...

Bees and agrochemicals have a long history. For example the first volume of IBRA’s journal Bee World in 1919 contains mention of poisoning of bees by spraying an orchard with lead arsenate. Being insects, it is self-evident that the use of insecticides to control crop pests poses a risk to bees. Bee poisoning incidents became a very serious problem...

The recognition that the Dark European honey bee, Apis mellifera mellifera, is increasingly threatened in its native range has led to the establishment of conservation programmes and protected areas throughout western Europe. Previous molecular surveys showed that, despite management strategies to preserve the genetic integrity of A. m. mellifera,...

The mite Varroa destructor has been associated with the collapse of millions of Apis mellifera honey bee colonies world-wide. During the past decade, a large body of research has revealed various interactions between varroa, the honey bee and various viral pathogens. One pathogen in particular, deformed wing virus (DWV), has emerged as the key path...

Recent laboratory based studies have demonstrated adverse sub-lethal effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on honey bees and bumble bees, and these studies have been influential in leading to a European Union moratorium on the use of three neonicotinoids, clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam on “bee attractive” crops. Yet so far, these same...

In 2017, the European Commission initiated the EurBeST study to explore the possibilities of using selective breeding of honey bees to increase Varroa resistance traits. One of the specific aims of the study was to assess the process of honey bee queen breeding through an economic analysis. The methodology for calculating the costs of queen product...

Honey bees play an essential role in modern agriculture as farm animals and crop pollinators, and they contribute to one third of our diet. Over the last few decades, managed honey bees have faced large-scale losses worldwide. Various causes include the spread of pathogens and parasites, habitat loss and loss of forage, pesticide use, and climate c...

EurBeST — A Pilot Study Testing Varroa-resistant Bees Under Commercial Beekeeping Conditions.

A diverse supply of pollen is an important factor for honey bee health, but information about the pollen diversity available to colonies at the landscape scale is largely missing. In this COLOSS study, beekeeper citizen scientists sampled and analyzed the diversity of pollen collected by honey bee colonies. As a simple measure of diversity, beekeep...

The BEEBOOK project arose from discussions at early COLOSS (Prevention of Honey Bee COlony LOSSes) meetings. The vision was, and still is, to develop a definitive inventory of standard techniques and methods in honey bee research to ensure that studies performed by different laboratories around the world would be directly comparable. The manual, ti...

“Bee pollen” is pollen collected from flowers by honey bees. It is used by the bees to nourish themselves, mainly by providing royal jelly and brood food, but it is also used for human nutrition. For the latter purpose, it is collected at the hive entrance as pellets that the bees bring to the hive. Bee pollen has diverse bioactivities, and thus ha...

Developing resistance to the varroa mite in honey bees is a major goal for apicultural science and practice, the development of selection strategies and the availability of resistant stock. Here we present an extended literature review and survey of resistant populations and selection programs in the EU and elsewhere, including expert interviews. W...

The socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 on society have yet to be truly revealed; there is no doubt that the pandemic has severely affected the daily lives of most of humanity. It is to be expected that the research activities of scientists could be impacted to varying degrees, but no data exist on how COVID-19 has affected research specifically. He...

The COLOSS BEEBOOK project arose from discussions at meetings of the COLOSS (Prevention of Honey Bee COlony LOSSes; www.coloss.org) association, which was established in 2008 to explore all possible reasons for honey bee colony losses (Williams et al., 2012). Those unfamiliar with the concept of the COLOSS BEEBOOK are welcome to consult the introdu...

Butler, Colin Gaskin (1913–2016), entomologist, was born on 26 October 1913 in King Edward Road, Christs Hospital, Horsham, Sussex, the son of the Revd Walter Gasking Butler (1887–1967), schoolmaster, later headmaster of St Faith’s School, Cambridge, and his wife, Phyllis, née Pearce (1893–1953). He was educated at Monkton Combe School, Bath, Somer...

INSIGNIA aims to design and test an innovative, non-invasive, scientifically proven citizen science environmental monitoring protocol for the detection of pesticides via honey bees. It is a pilot project initiated and financed by the European Commission (PP-1-1-2018; EC SANTE). The study is being carried out by a consortium of specialists in honey...

Il piccolo coleottero dell'alveare Aethina tumida è originario dell'Africa sub-sahariana, dove non è generalmente considerato un parassita. Il suo arrivo nel 1996 nel sud-est degli Stati Uniti è stato inaspettato, così come l'effetto devastante che ha avuto sulle colonie. Da allora si è diffuso in Australia, Canada e Messico. Un'incursione isolata...

Il coleottero Aethina tumida, anche chiamato “piccolo coleottero (o “scarabeo”) dell’alveare”, o “SHB” dall’inglese “small hive beetle” è un problema abbastanza recente per l’apicoltura. Infatti nei due testi di riferimento per la patologia apistica “Honey bee pathology” (Bailey and Ball, 1991) e “Honey bee pests predators and diseases” (Morse and...

The COLOSS (Prevention of Honey Bee Colony Losses) network was founded in 2008 as a consequence of the heavy and frequent losses of honey bee colonies experienced in many regions of the world (Neumann & Carreck, 2010). The network has many accomplishments, with the COLOSS BEEBOOK being among those. The COLOSS BEEBOOK was developed to provide honey...

The dark European honey bee Apis mellifera mellifera (Figure 1) was originally distributed throughout much of northern Europe, from France and the British Isles in the west to western Russia in the east. It was also almost certainly the first honey bee introduced to north America. However, over several hundred years, but especially in the late 20th...

Policy-makers often need to rely on experts with disparate fields of expertise when making policy choices in complex, multi-faceted, dynamic environments such as those dealing with ecosystem services. For policy-makers wishing to make evidence-based decisions which will best support pollinator abundance and pollination services, one of the problems...

Laboratory studies have shown than neonicotinoid insecticides can cause sub-lethal effects on bees. Field studies are needed to determine whether these effects also occur when bees forage on flowering crops grown from neonicotinoid-treated seeds. However, for many reasons the results of field experiments may be inconsistent. For example, neonicotin...

Due to concerns over negative impacts on insect pollinators, the European Union has implemented a moratorium on the use of three neonicotinoid pesticide seed dressings for mass-flowering crops. We assessed the effectiveness of this policy in reducing the exposure risk to honeybees by collecting 130 samples of honey from bee keepers across the UK be...

Supporting figures and tables. Figures and tables describing raw data and 2014 pre-moratorium results for neonicotinoid residues in honey. (DOCX)

Apitherapy is one of the fastest growing areas of interest among beekeepers worldwide. Beekeepers are interested in the techniques that they can use to produce honey bee hive products such as beeswax, honey, pollen, propolis, royal jelly and venom. Naturally the efficient production of large quantities is important, but so is the purity of the prod...

The small hive beetle Aethina tumida is native to sub-Saharan Africa, where it is not generally considered a pest. Its arrival in 1996 in the south east of the United States was unexpected, as was the devastating effect it had on colonies. It has since spread to Australia, Canada, and Mexico, Brazil and the Phillipines. An isolated incursion in Por...

Neonicotinoid insecticides have been under scrutiny in recent years due to their potential to harm bees. The European Union recently imposed a two year moratorium (2014-2015) on their application as a seed-treatment for certain bee-attractive crops. In this study we investigated the effect of mature plant size on residual neonicotinoid concentratio...

Declines of bees and other pollinating insects have been documented for a long time, but attracted the attention of the world’s press with the phenomenon of “colony collapse disorder” of honey bees in the USA in 2006. This has led to much research into the causes. The scientific consensus is that there is no single cause of pollinator declines, but...

Since its establishment in 2008, the COLOSS (Prevention of honey bee COlony LOSSes) association has been successful in bringing together bee research scientists, bee health specialists and extension advisors to study the causes of global honey bee losses, and now has a substantial output of papers published in refereed scientific journals. The newl...

On 19th–20 February 2015, a Workshop and Extension Day entitled “A European strategy for small hive beetles Aethina tumida” was held in Bologna, Italy. This was organized by the newly formed COLOSS “Small Hive Beetle Task Force’, and the Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l’analisi dell’economia agraria – Unità di ricerca di apicoltura e bac...

In September last year, while many European bee scientists were gathered in Murcia, Spain for the EurBee Conference, small hive beetles were discovered in southern Italy. Sadly, history repeated itself, as one year later, when the world’s bee scientists gathered in Daejeon, South Korea, a further outbreak of SHB in Italy was confirmed (see page 42)...

A practical set of A6 laminated cards bound by a ring, designed for use in the apiary. One card shows the appearance of healthy brood, the other nine cards depict various pests, diseases and other conditions that may be found by the beekeeper. Each card has a clear photograph of an affected comb, with a close-up view to aid diagnosis. On the revers...

Although knowledge about honey bee geographic and genetic diversity has increased tremendously in recent decades, the adaptation of honey bees to their local environment has not been well studied. The current demand for high economic performance of bee colonies with desirable behavioural characteristics contributes to changing the natural diversity...

The United Kingdom has a diverse agriculture which supplies a variety of high quality food and other products. Agricultural land is integrated within an ecosystem of semi-natural vegetation which supports a varied wildlife. Here we examine why bees are an essential part of this agroecosystem, what types of bee are in the UK, and what they need to s...

Mainly due to problems such as "Colony Collapse Disorder" experienced by beekeepers in recent years, the conservation of bees and other pollinators is currently very high on the public agenda. It may therefore now seem inconceivable that just twenty years ago, bee conservation was sadly not fashionable, and it was difficult to attract the interest...

It is recognised that bees and other insect pollinators have intrinsic cultural value, and play an essential role in the diversity and resilience of our plant and animal life, through the pollination of agricultural crops and wild plants. Defra’s National Pollinator Strategy, to be launched in 2014, aims to cover all of the approximately 1,500 inse...

An understanding of the anatomy and functions of internal and external structures is fundamental to many studies on the honey bee Apis mellifera. Similarly, proficiency in dissection techniques is vital for many more complex procedures. In this paper, which is a prelude to the other papers of the COLOSS BEEBOOK, we outline basic honey bee anatomy a...

Most scientists who study bees believe that the long-term declines seen in many species in Europe and North America have been driven by changes in land use, primarily agricultural intensification since world war two. This has meant fewer flowers to feed from and, for some species, fewer nest sites or less suitable habitat. The honeybee Apis mellife...

An understanding of the anatomy and functions of internal and external structures is fundamental to many studies on the honey bee Apis mellifera. Similarly, proficiency in dissection techniques is vital for many more complex procedures. In this paper, which is a prelude to the other papers of the COLOSS BEEBOOK, we outline basic honey bee anatomy...

The annual Eva Crane Memorial Prize is awarded to the best, most innovative and scientifically exciting, article published in the Journal of Apicultural Research, as judged by the current international panel of Editors.

Rothamsted Research located at Harpenden, in the English county of Hertfordshire, is one of the oldest agricultural research institutions in the world. Recently it had cause to celebrate.