The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published on 28 July its report on the comprehensive review of the available scientific evidence on bee background mortality, as part of the planned revision of the EFSA 2013 guidance document on the risk assessment of pesticides to bees in the EU.
In March 2019, the Commission had forced EFSA to revise its highly protective guidance document on bees, to the chagrin of NGOs and the European Parliament who had accused the institution of giving in to Member States hostile to the full implementation of this document (see EUROPE 12335/16).
The report, published in accordance with the Commission’s mandate, covers three groups of bees - honey bees, bumble bees and solitary bees - and focuses on the mortality of adult bees.
It is the result of a systematic review of all scientific literature and a survey of beekeepers in several EU countries.
EFSA considered that the available literature would provide little information on the direct impact of beekeeping practices on the mortality of honey bees.
The results of the analysis show significant differences in the levels of background mortality between castes and the roles of bees in the colony.
According to EFSA “the impact of beekeeping practices on mortality appears to be very limited, but not completely absent”.
The data set on bumble bees and solitary bees is too scattered to draw firm conclusions. Nevertheless, it is sufficient to define a plausible range of daily background mortality rates and to provide some indication of differences between species.
The EFSA working group also proposed four possible approaches for defining the specific protection objectives - what needs to be protected and to what extent - to be used in the revision of the guidance document. These options have already been criticised by the NGO PAN Europe (see EUROPE 12529/19).
To view the EFSA report: https://bit.ly/2X50KIH (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)