Projects to Address Decline of Honeybees and Other Insect Pollinators

Scientists at the University of Leeds have been awarded nearly £1.5million to explore the causes and consequences of threats to bees and other pollinating insects in the UK. The Leeds research is part of the Insect Pollinators Initiative, which aims to ensure that the pollination of agricultural and horticultural crops in the UK is protected and biodiversity in natural ecosystems is maintained. Insects pollinate around two-thirds of the agricultural crops grown globally and the total loss of insect pollinators could cost up to £440million per year in the UK - about 13% of the UK’s income from farming.

Funding worth almost £10million in total has been announced as part of the Insect Pollinators Initiative, which is a collaboration between the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Natural Environment Research Council, The Scottish Government and the Wellcome Trust, and is funded under the auspices of the Living With Environmental Change partnership.

Academics in the University of Leeds’ Faculty of Biological Sciences have been awarded total funding of £1.47million and they will work with other scientists at the Universities of Reading and Bristol on different projects under the initiative.

Professor Bill Kunin, School of computing at Leeds, said: "There is growing evidence that domestic honeybees and wild pollinators are in trouble, and that many wildflowers that depend on them for pollination are also declining. But we don’t know how these trends are linked - whether pollinator declines are driving flower losses or vice versa. We will also test whether other factors such as pesticide usage and land use history have an impact on pollinators, and whether honeybees and wild pollinators affect each others’ populations.

"Our job is to work out the cause and effect relationship between these plant and pollinator losses, and to see if we can work out ways to slow or reverse them. Ultimately, it’s about maintaining the UK’s biodiversity: maintaining a rural environment rich in wildflowers and wild pollinators. It’s important because biodiversity makes our lives richer." Dr Koos Biesmeijer, also from the School of Computing at Leeds, said: "The decline in wild pollinators and managed honeybees potentially affects UK agricultural production. We will determine which wild and managed pollinators contribute to pollination of insectdependent crops and whether the lack of wild pollinators limits agricultural production in UK landscapes.

"We will also analyse how the supply of managed honeybee hives for crop pollination can be improved. Investigating whether climate change will affect UK crop pollination in the future is also a focus of our work."