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The BEESPOKE project

BEESPOKE is a project funded by the INTERREG North Sea Region Programme.

Insect pollination is worth €15 Billion in the EU, but the number of wild pollinators is decreasing due to loss of flower-rich habitats. As a response the EU adopted a pollinator initiative in 2018. The North Sea Region (NSR) is one of the most productive agricultural areas, but pollinators are in decline across the region.

The BEESPOKE overall objective is to increase the number of pollinators and crop pollination on local and landscape scale by providing new expertise, tools and financial knowledge to land managers and policy makers, in order to create more sustainable and resilient agro-ecosystems.

BEESPOKE brings a wide range of partners together – from policy makers, research institutes, advisory and end users from seven different NSR-countries – to develop new products and approaches to increase the diversity of insect pollinators and crop yields by 10%. We will develop bespoke seed mixes and habitat management guidelines to support the suite of pollinators required for 14 crop types on 72 demonstration sites.

Sites for each crop will showcase best management practices, and training materials will be developed for biodiversity monitoring and for measuring pollination. The same type of agro-ecosystems occur across the NSR and transnational cooperation will give economies of scale for development of these novel tools.

This approach will enable land managers to adopt pollinator management as a routine practice, fostering a bottom-up land manager approach, ensuring a continuing improvement of crop pollination by insects.