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To provide a complete portrayal of the multiple factors negatively impacting insects in agricultural landscapes it is necessary to assess the concurrent incidence, magnitude, and interactions among multiple stressors over substantial biogeographical scales. Trans-national ecological field investigations with wide-ranging stakeholders typically encounter numerous challenges during the design planning stages, not least that the scientific soundness of a spatially replicated study design must account for the substantial geographic and climatic variation among distant sites. ‘PoshBee’ (Pan-European assessment, monitoring, and mitigation of Stressors on the Health of Bees) is a multi-partner transdisciplinary agroecological project established to investigate the suite of stressors typically encountered by pollinating insects in European agricultural landscapes. To do this, PoshBee established a network of 128 study sites across eight European countries and collected over 50 measurements and samples relating to the nutritional, toxicological, pathogenic, and landscape components of the bees’ environment. This paper describes the development process, rationale, and end-result of each aspect of the of the PoshBee field investigation. We describe the main issues and challenges encountered during the design stages and highlight a number of actions or processes that may benefit other multi-partner research consortia planning similar large-scale studies. It was soon identified that in a multi-component study design process, the development of interaction and communication networks involving all collaborators and stakeholders requires considerable time and resources. It was also necessary at each planning stage to be mindful of the needs and objectives of all stakeholders and partners, and further challenges inevitably arose when practical limitations, such as time restrictions and labour constraints, were superimposed upon prototype study designs. To promote clarity for all stakeholders, for each sub-component of the study, there should be a clear record of the rationale and reasoning that outlines how the final design transpired, what compromises were made, and how the requirements of different stakeholders were accomplished. Ultimately, multi-national agroecological field studies such as PoshBee benefit greatly from the involvement of diverse stakeholders and partners, ranging from field ecologists, project managers, policy legislators, mathematical modelers, and farmer organisations. While the execution of the study highlighted the advantages and benefits of large-scale transdisciplinary projects, the long planning period emphasized the need to formally describe a design framework that could facilitate the design process of future multi-partner collaborations.

During the 2000s, the problem of pesticide poisoning of honeybees seemed to be almost solved. The number of cases has decreased in comparison to the 1970s. The problem of acute honeybee poisoning, however, has not disappeared, but instead has transformed into a problem of poisoning from ‘traditional’ pesticides like organophosphorus pesticides or pyrethroids, to poisoning from additional sources of ‘modern’ systemic neonicotinoids and fipronil. In this article, the biological activity of pesticides was reviewed. The poisoning symptoms, incident definitions, and monitoring systems, as well as the interpretation of the analytical results, were also reviewed. The range of pesticides, and the detected concentrations of pesticides in poisoned honeybee samples, were reviewed. And, for the first time, cases of poisoning related to neonicotinoids were reviewed. The latter especially is of practical importance and could be helpful to analysts and investigators of honeybee poisoning incidents. It is assumed that secondary poisoning induced by plant collected materials contaminated with systemic pesticides occurs. Food stored in a hive and contaminated with systemic pesticides consumed continuously by the same generation of winter bees, may result in sub-lethal intoxication. This leads to abnormal behaviour identified during acute intoxication. The final result is that the bees discontinue their social role in the honeybee colony super organism, and colony collapse disorder (CCD) takes place. The process described above refers primarily to robust and strong colonies that were able to collect plenty of food due to effective plant protection.