Assessing air quality thanks to bees to provide a more complete knowledge of pollution in qualitative and quantitative terms.
It is the innovative integrated monitoring project that is starting up on an industrial site in the western area of the city of Ravenna, which involves Crea, the Agriculture and Environment centre.
It is called 'Bees for Integrated Air Quality Monitoring' and is the first initiative of this type in the Romagna city, which provides for the integration of sampling techniques and chemical analysis of pollutants, from an environmental, health and olfactory point of view, with the bio-monitoring carried out with bees, in the areas of interest.
In fact, the function of bees as biological indicators is now widely recognised, capable of showing the deterioration of the environment in which they live through three signals: high mortality, disturbances in the demographic development of the colony and the residues which can be found in the their bodies or in hive products.
In detail, six hives will be used, three for each of the two monitoring stations identified.
The researchers will sample incoming foraging bees and recently imported honey;
without any consequences for the development of the hives.
Sampling and analyzes to determine the presence of environmental pollutants will be carried out four times a year.
At the same time, the same hives will be visited to detect their strength in terms of the quantity of adult bees, the brood, the consistency of the food stocks and any signs of pathologies.
The one-year project was born from the collaboration between the Secam Srl chemical company and Cirsa - the Interdepartmental Research Center for Environmental Sciences of the Alma Mater, University of Bologna.