The EURL for Bee Health held its 11^th annual workshop on 22^nd and 23^rd September 2021 by video conference. This workshop was a success with up to 59 participants connected at the same time.

 

This year, the discussions focused on the American foulbrood and the advantages of new molecular tools for the study and surveillance of this disease. The EURL presented the development of a core genome multilocus sequence typing scheme (cgMLST) for P. larvae (EuroPLarva project), agent of the American foulbrood. Dr. Joakim Skarin from the EURL-Campylobacter, who also participated in this study, presented the diagnostic techniques using Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies.

 

Dr. Franco Mutinelli, Head of the Italian NRL, presented a state of play of the occurrence and surveillance of SHB in Southern Italy. Dr. Severine Matthijs, head of the Belgium NRL, gave a talk about the first laboratory results of a field study part of B-GOOD (the Horizon 2020 project). The participants had also the pleasure to listen to a presentation from the Polish NRL representative. Dr. Andrej Bober gave a talk on the Polish NRL activities and the honey bee health status in Poland. The workshop ended by the presentation of the EURL activities during the last period and the work perspectives.

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

 

Documents and presentations of the workshop can be found here for the NRL network.