The EURL for Bee Health held its 9^th. annual workshop on 16^th. October 2019 at ANSES Sophia Antipolis.

This year the EURL presented the feedback on the three interlaboratory proficiency tests (ILPT) organised in 2018-2019, on the small hive beetle (SHB), Paenibacillus larvae and Tropilaelaps as well as the ILPTs scheduled in 2020. Since the last annual workshop, methods were also developed and/or validated for the quantification of pesticides multiresidues in nectar, for the identification of SHB eggs, for the determination of diagnosis thresholds of viral diseases and for the identification of bacteria causing foulbroods.

The analysis of the adoption process of the method for the quantification of six viruses was also described and the results of the enquiry on queen cages importation were shown.

In addition, the EURL presented a guidance document for the management of the infestation by SHB in the soil. This document was produced by a working group including the EURL and four European NRLs and released on the EURL website network in April 2019.

 

The participants had also the pleasure to listen to presentations from four NRL representatives. Dr. Ivana Tlak Gajger, head of the Croatian NRL and Dr. Sirpa Heinikainen, representative of the Finnish NRL, gave a talk on their activities and the honey bee health status in their respective countries. Dr. Oureilidis Konstantinos, representative of the Greek NRL, presented the programme of surveillance for the infestation by SHB set up in Greece. Finally, Dr. Franco Mutinelli, Head of the Italian NRL, presented a state of play of the occurrence and surveillance of SHB in Southern Italy.

 

We thank all the speakers for their interesting presentations and all the contributors for the fruitful discussions.

 

The documents of this workshop are available here for the NRL network.