Joint Puplication on Winter 2009/10 Colony Losses

Dear colleagues

Spring has started and you will have most likely an overview on winter losses in your countries.

I herewith suggest to pool data (estimated using the standard COLOSS questionare) to have a single muli-authored publication.

Last week in Prague I got information that things are moving in Brussels and that we should deliver asap some strong arguments to support bees preferentially at a sustainable basis.

In order to do so it appears useful to estimate costs for each country based on local prizes.

This will be a convincing argument for politicians, especially if we will repeat this annually.

First a scientific paper and then joint press releases if possible in all COLOSS member countries.

Clearly, I understand that you have so far prefered to publish data in separate articles.

However, losses are not brand new anymore (thereby limiting options for publication in interantional journals) and only a joint data base will be a good political argument.

Therefore, those among you who have standardized colony losses data from last winter and who are interested in such a  joint COLOSS  paper on

"Status of honeybee health and resulting costs" are herewith encouraged to please contact me until 31.05.2010. 

We then make a more detailed plan for the paper.

Yours sincerely

Peter Neumann 
____________________________________ 
PD Dr. rer. nat. Peter Neumann 
Chair COST Action FA0803 
Head of Honeybee Pathology Section 
Swiss Bee Research Centre 
Agroscope Liebefeld-Posieux 
Research Station ALP 
Schwarzenburgstrasse 161 
CH-3003 Bern 
Switzerland 
E-mail: peter.neumann@alp.admin.ch 
Phone: +41 31 323 82 38 
Fax: +41 31 323 82 27 
www.apis.admin.ch