New Tools for Land Managers
The North Sea Region is intensively farmed and consequently new habitats for pollinators may have to be established on farmed land.
This can be an attractive option on low-yielding lands, but not always. Economic investigations revealed that the opportunity costs - i.e., the costs of losing alternative options - are crucial to the profitability of agri-environment options.
For highly pollinator-dependent crops, there may be no other option if pollination levels are low. In such situations, the landowner needs to know how much land to take out of production and where to place it to optimise wild bee conservation and crop pollination.
In addition, as wild bees can be quite mobile there may be opportunities for land managers to work together at a landscape scale to encourage their populations of wild bees. To help with this the BEESPOKE project has developed two online tools:
Tool 1 - Expected pollination service and effect of a flower strip
Tool 1 allows users to assess freely available pollination services from existing habitats for a range of crops. It can also predict the effect of adding flower strips or nesting places on crop pollination. Predictions are available for Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK.
Tool 2 - Selecting wildflower seeds for your crop
Tool 2 offers country-specific tips on the best flowering species for 12 crop types. We identified the main pollinators of each crop along with the three top plant species on which they forage, excluding any that may attract pests The tips cover Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and the UK.
Find both tools here
On the BEESPOKE Tools Website you can find:
- Both tools
- Step by step explanation how to use the tools
- Background information on the mechanisms & calculations behind it and the data supporting the tools