The critical role of bees
|
Flower-visiting animals provide critical pollination services with numerous benefits to humans. Bees are the most important group of pollinators and sustain populations of wild plants that underpin biodiversity and ecosystem function, produce honey and other beekeeping products, and support human-dependant crops production. Bees visit more than 90 per cent of the leading global crop types, and improve the yield of approximately 75 per cent of them, including most fruits, seeds and nuts and several high value commodity crops such as coffee, cocoa and oilseed rape.
Our approachThe major objectives are to promote apicultural scientific, technical and economic development. In particular, the role of bees as necessary pollinators for agricultural crops and natural flora, and the importance of plants as food sources, mainly for pollen and nectar, for bees.
Our approach is to obtain more knowledge about the pollinator essentials to improve the production of traditional crops, and crops that offer important new perspectives. We deal with Apis bees, but also look into the role played by other bee species, for example bumble bees. We are also working on obtaining knowledge concerning special characteristics of honey types from certain regions and on analysis of the botanical origin of honeys, pollen and even propolis. |
