DEVON beekeepers... you are needed.

A new project has launched with funding from Devon County Council Community Renewal Fund to map the genetic makeup of Devon’s honey bees.

The project has been launched by the B4 project, a Community Interest Company following £15,000 of funding from the Devon County Council Community Renewal Fund. The funding will facilitate this mapping project, but assistance from ALL Devon beekeepers is needed. Timescales are very tight for the research, so beekeepers are being urged to apply.

The ground-breaking citizen-science project will be run by Pollenize CIC that will collect the samples and Beebytes Analytics CIC that will test the genetic makeup of the bees. The scientific study will involve sampling bees from 200 hives from a wider geographical area as possible within Devon.

Bee geneticist experts at Beebytes will then map the genetic origins of the bees to aid efforts to improve local Devon bees.

Andrew Brown, managing director of the B4 Project said: ‘We want to find out what kind of bee Devon has.

‘Certain areas will have really interesting ancient bees.

‘The end result will be to encourage people to use their local bee.

‘A local bee that’s been around for a long time is better suited to the area than one that’s been moved around.’

The results collected will allow representative data to be obtained in Devon and contribute to the growing data set for Britain and Ireland.

Local co-ordinator Matthew Elmes of Pollenize explained:

‘A study of this magnitude has not happened anywhere else in the country- and probably nowhere else in the world. So, Devon beekeepers have an unprecedented opportunity to discover more about their honey bee populations. This will help future efforts to ensure a sustainable, healthy and productive population of honey bees in Devon.

After registering, beekeepers will be sent a kit with sample tubes containing preserving alcohol, they will collect live bees from the hive entrance and put them in the tube and then return the tube in the stamped-addressed envelope provided.

Beekeepers are urged to register their interest by email by contacting Will Bayfield-Farrell at [email protected] or by telephone 07505310471. The deadline for registering is October 1.

The results will be made available to the participants and to local beekeeping associations. Much national international interest is also expected as this will likely be the first time such citizen-science research has been conducted.