Beekeepers are the guardians of honeybee societies. Their knowledge, observations and experiences are all elements that can accelerate the understanding of the environmental factors that might influence both health and survival of honeybees.
Citizen science is an emerging and valuable tool for society not only because it enables two-way engagement between the public and the scientists but also because it can rapidly produce large-scale informative data. COLOSS (COLonies LOSSes) is an international non-profit organization focused on improving the wellbeing of honeybees. One of its main axis is based on the monitoring of colonies losses through a yearly questionnaire distributed to beekeepers across the participating countries.
Since 2018, Dr Solenn Patalano is the national coordinator of COLOSS for Greece. Anonymous answers to this annual questionnaire have already contributed to assessing the risks faced by beekeepers according to their geographical position. In the long term, the results will help to determine specific patterns of the problems faced by beekeepers so that scientists can effectively concentrate their research efforts in order to explain the causes and possibly influence the decision-making of beekeepers.
If you wish to participate in this citizen science project, contact us on
