Honeybees as Bioindicators in Environmental Monitoring: Practical Applications and Open Online Course

Abstract

Bioindicators are of fundamental importance in environmental monitoring of contaminants produced and spread by men’s activities. Honeybees are cheap and flexible test organisms for passive biomonitoring and bioaccumulation of a large variety of pollutants. Bees can collect on their bodies or include in beehive products the chemicals diffused in the air, on plant surfaces, and dissolved in water allowing an effective screening of possible hazards for human and ecosystem health. We carried out monitoring activities on the environmental distribution of agrochemicals, heavy metals, radionuclides, and phytopathogenic organisms. We placed the “monitoring stations” in selected areas. These consist of a couple of beehives equipped with baskets to collect the dead bees, which are enumerated to evaluate the mortality and analyzed to identify the pollutants. Palynological analyses were combined with analytical results and data processing. Currently, monitoring plans are ongoing in different municipalities. The increasing interest in environmental protection has led us to develop the “BIOAPI-OER” (Open access Educational Resource) project, a short online, free access course on the theme of bees as environmental bioindicators. It targets different target groups such as scholars, Ph.D. students, beekeepers, and professionals interested in environmental biomonitoring.