Environmental biomonitoring is an essential practice for assessing the health status of ecosystems. It employs organisms called bioindicators, capable of sensing changes in the environment where they live.
Among other bioindicators, bees emerge as excellent biological sentinels. Their life cycle and products collect and store information about the imbalances that some chemical pollutants create in the ecosystem. This makes them valuable allies in safeguarding biodiversity and promoting sustainable development.
The study of bees as bioindicators
Bees play a key role in detecting chemical damage in their environment. For over 30 years, the Department of Agro-Food Sciences and Technologies (DISTAL) of the University of Bologna, in collaboration with the National Institute of Beekeeping, conducted extensive research on the relationship between bees and pesticides.
The use of bees in environmental monitoring is not a new practice. Already in 1935, Jaroslav Svoboda, researcher at the Institute for Research in Beekeeping in Libcice, Czechoslovakia, reported the negative effects of industrial pollutants on bees. Subsequently, numerous experiences have confirmed the effectiveness of these insects as indicators of environmental contaminants.
Many Italian nature reserves and protected areas now use bees for environmental biomonitoring. This is the case of the Sasso Simone e Simoncello Regional Natural Park and the Monti Sibillini National Park.
Why bees?
There are several morphological and ethological characteristics of bees that make them excellent ecological detectors. First of all, bees are present almost everywhere, it is possible for humans to breed them and they do not have large dietary requirements or high operating costs.
The first important aspect for bees as bioindicators is their high sensitivity to insecticides. These can be detected when they are scattered improperly in all environmental areas that bees attend (soil, vegetation, water, air). Another important aspect is the anatomy of the bee: its body, covered with hair, is particularly suitable for intercepting materials and substances present on flowers and plants during pollination. Moreover, the high rate of reproduction and a relatively short average life induce a fast and continuous regeneration in the hive.
Finally, their high mobility and wide flight range allow bees to cover a large territorial area, providing significant health data on large portions of ecosystems.
The active role of foraging bees
Foraging bees, which make up about a quarter of the bee population in a hive, are responsible for collecting outside the hive everything that the family needs to develop. Every day, each forager makes an average of ten trips, covering an area of about 7 km².
According to a study, a colony of bees carries out 10 million withdrawals every day, without considering the transport of water that on hot days can reach even half a liter (Pinzauti and Felicioli, 1998). Unlike other bioindicators, mostly immobile, bees can be defined as a traveling sensor. Bees go around in their territory, take samples of possibly contaminated substances, contaminate themselves and return to the hive.
What kind of information comes from the analysis of the life of bees?
Bees provide two sets of crucial information about the environment. On the one hand, high mortality or absence of bees in a territory may indicate the presence of chemical pollutants, such as insecticides and agricultural pesticides. On the other hand, both in their bodies and in the products of the hive, residues of agropharmaceuticals and other pollutants (such as heavy metals or radionuclides) can be detected.
Furthermore, the data obtained from bee biomonitoring refers to the entire area explored (about 7 km² around the hive), and not to a single point, as it happens with instrumental methods such as automatic air pollutant control units. Therefore, with a limited number of hive stations you can control large areas.
Concrete applications and future prospects
Nowadays, biomonitoring through bees and pollinators is increasingly used, thanks to the development of urban hives and urban apiaries. The idea is trying to build smart cities, cities that manage resources intelligently and are attentive to the needs of its citizens: only a green, bee-friendly city is actually livable and sustainable.
Monitoring the quality of water, air, soil and vegetation makes it possible to control the environmental pollution of cities and the production processes of the food chain, to ensure a better quality of life for citizens. Environmental biomonitoring allows both to measure the environmental status and plan dedicated solutions, and to support socially and economically useful activities, such as urban beekeeping.
Beeing x biomonitoring via bees
Beeing developed a project of biomonitoring of air quality using honeybees or wild bees, which act as a bioindicator.
The project is aimed at individuals and companies, as well as schools and universities, who want to increase their environmental awareness and promote sustainable growth.