PLAN4BEE gets a corporate identity outfit

For four days, the PLAN4BEE team visited field sites in and around Ngaoundéré, Cameroon, and tested field and laboratory methods to be used in the planned future research project.

Dr. Mazi Sanda hosted the second PLAN4BEE four-day workshop at the University of Ngaoundéré in Cameroon and invited guests from the partner countries Kenya, Benin, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Germany as well as from South Africa and Nigeria. Participants presented their research on honey bees and other pollinators and exchanged ideas for an African Pollinator Initiative.

PLAN4BEE’s African collaborators spend the remaining seven days of the guest visits with Prof. Regina Pohle-Fröhlich and Prof. Michael Gref at the Hochschule Niederrhein in Krefeld to discuss visual and acoustic AI methods for pollinator monitoring before it is time to leave Germany

Next stop of the journey to the German PLAN4BEE partner institutions is the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart. Dr. Kirsten Traynor is hosting the African collaborators and introducing them to her group’s research on honeybees.

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.