This week, our African collaborators visit the Julius Kühn Institute facilities in Berlin. They focus on pesticide residue analysis of different bee matrices conducted at the analytical laboratories of the Institute for Bee Protection.

Dr. Katharina Stein hosts Dr. Kamau, Dr. Sanda, Dr. Dassou and Dr. Coulibaly at the University of Potsdam. Guests and host share their experience in flower visiting insects and discuss further techniques in pollination ecology.

A farewell to our guests at Braunschweig train station – the last weeks were productive and filled with a lot of exchange and discussion about further project ideas and perspectives on pollination and bee health in Germany and Sub-Sahara Africa.

During their guest visit at the JKI, Dr. Kamau, Dr. Sanda, Dr. Dassou and Dr. Coulibaly participate in laboratory and field work activities at the Institute for Bee Protection. This is a great opportunity to discuss standardization of methods used in their four African home countries.

African and German collaborators together with invited guests came together for a week-long workshop held at the JKI in Braunschweig. Talks by the participants and break-out groups on topics related to the overall scheme of the project accelerate lively discussions and further steps towards a joint proposal on bee monitoring and pollination in the four participating African countries.

German and African research partners meet for the first time as a group at the DFG status workshop in Bonn. The objectives and further steps of the PLAN4BEE project are presented to other participants via a poster and a short talk.

PLAN4BEE officially starts!

All collaborators meet online to discuss the upcoming workshops in Bonn and Braunschweig, and the visits of all African partners to the participating German institutions in Braunschweig, Berlin, Potsdam, Stuttgart-Hohenheim and Krefeld.