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From: [email-masked] (Andy Nachbaur)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 1995 15:30:00 GMT

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The International Bee Research Association and Linnean Society of
London are holding this symposium on 6-7 April 1995 at the Linnean
Society rooms, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, UK.

WHY BEE CONSERVATION?

Bees have an important place in agriculture and in preserving wild
habitats.
*       They often have highly specialized relationships with native floras,
so play vital roles in maintaining natural vegetation.
*       Bees are particularly suitable for environmental monitoring purposes,
because of their diverse nesting strategies and specific host plant
relationships.
*       Both social bees such as bumble bees and solitary bees are actual
or potential pollinators of crops.

Changes in land use in Europe have made bee conservation an
increasingly important issue as the nesting sites and food plants for
bees are destroyed by increasing monocultures: more than 400 bee
species from north of the Alps appear in Red Data lists.  Although non-
Apis bees are vital in maintaining native floras, our understanding of
pollination ecology at the community level is growing faster than our
knowledge of bee taxonomy, and with the consequent backlog of data
analysis pollination botanists are ill-served by the current state of bee
systematics in the Palaearctic.

This two-day scientific meeting will concentrate on bee conservation in
Europe and the Mediterranean basin, but will also consider the
Americas and other areas with important lessons for others about bee
conservation.

The symposium builds on a rising tide of interest in scientific circles, if
not political ones, about the importance of this issue.  In 1991, STOA
(Scientific and Technical Options Assessment, European Parliament)
commissioned a review on the impact of changing beekeeping practice
and land use in Europe on crop and wild flower pollination, which was
published in IBRA's technical journal Bee World.

Following this review, the EC funded a workshop in Brussels to discuss
these issues and the findings of the meeting point clearly to the need
for bee conservation:
*       Agriculture in the EU needs bees to pollinate most of its crops.
*       Intensive agriculture provides an inhospitable environment for bees.
*       Habitat management for bee conservation is necessary.

Delegates at the workshop expressed considerable interest in setting up
a collaborative European research programme into the problems of
habitat management and the potential of set-aside for bees: this hasn't
happened but we will be using this symposium to launch a network as
part of FAO's ESCORENA programme.

Last December, IBRA held a symposium in Cambridge on bee forage
and conservation and this year published the book Forage for bees in an
agricultural landscape, which discusses the importance of forage and
nesting sites in bee conservation.

'Conserving Europe's bees' will be a meeting of major importance in
promoting scientific debate and collaboration on this important subject.

THURSDAY 6 APRIL 1995

Habitats for bees; Dr Paul Westrich, Institut f|r Wildbienenkunde,
T|bingen, Germany.

Dr Paul Westrich, T|bingen: Considering the ecological needs of our
native bees: the problems of partial habitats.

Dr Matthias Klemm, Consultant biologist, T|bingen: Cliffbanks, sand
pits and levees as substitutes for threatened or destroyed riverine
habitats.

Dr Mike Edwards, Private consultant (formerly Natural History
Museum), Midhurst, UK: Optimizing habitats for bees in the United
Kingdom.

Dr Chris Saure, Zoologische Institut, Freie Universitdt, Berlin: Urban
habitats for bees: the example of the city of Berlin.

Grappling with bee diversity; Chris O'Toole, Curatorial Officer, Hope
Entomological Collections, University of Oxford, UK.

Professor Amots Dafni, Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa,
Israel, and Professor Avi Schmida, Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
Israel: (Threats to bee diversity in Mediterranean Israel: the case of
Bombus terrestris versus the rest).

Professor Charles Michener, Snow Entomological Museum, University
of Kansas, USA: (PCAM: a case study of getting to grips with bee
diversity). Keynote speaker.

Chris O'Toole, UK: Bee systematics: the continuing crisis and some
possible cures.

Dr Theodora Petanidou, Department of Ecology, University of
Thessaloniki, Greece: Co-evolution of native bee faunas and floras in
changing Mediterranean communities.

Evening

Informal mixer.

FRIDAY 7 APRIL 1995

Do plants need bees?; Professor Ingrid Williams, Group Leader, Insect-
Plant Interactions, Entomology and Nematology Department,
Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, UK.

Dr Sarah Corbet, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK:
(Are native bees more important pollinators than honey bees?)

Dr Manja Kwak, Department of Plant Biology, University of Groningen,
Netherlands: (Importance of native pollinators to native plant
conservation).

Dr Ken Richards, Research Leader, Agriculture Canada Crop Sciences
Section, Lethbridge Research Station: (Bees compared as pollinators of
legume crops).

Professor Ingrid Williams, UK: Comparing bee-mediated gene flow in
crop plants.

Dr Pat Willmer, Department of Biology, University of St Andrew's, UK:
(Physiological constraints on bee foraging)

Competition in bee-plant and bee-bee interactions; Dr Stephen
Buchmann, Research Entomologist, USDA-ARS, Carl Hayden Bee
Research Center, Tucson, Arizona, USA.

Dr Stephen Buchmann, USA: Competition for pollen and nectar
between honey bees and native bees in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.

Dr Evan Sugden, University of Kentucky, USA: Towards an ecological
perspective of beekeeping.

Dr David Roubik, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama: On
long-term trends of bee populations and their interpretation.

Dr Robinn Thorpe, University of California, Davis, USA: Resource
overlap among native and introduced bees in California.

Poster papers and exhibits

There will be limited space for poster papers and exhibits and
demonstrations relating to the theme of the conference, but these must
be notified in advance.

Please contact Andrew Matheson, Director, International Bee Research
Association, 18 North Road, Cardiff CF1 3DY, UK.  Fax (+44) 1222-
665522.  E.mail: [email-masked].

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