UM awarded EU funding for the Prima project, Medibees

Honeybees are critical to sustainable agricultural systems. In the context of increased desertification of the Mediterranean region, including the Maltese islands, a new project is aiming to contribute to this sustainability.

Medibees (Monitoring of the Mediterranean honeybee subspecies and their resilience to climate change for the improvement of sustainable agro-ecosystems) will identify honeybee subspecies that are most resilient to climate change and common pathogens throughout the Mediterranean region, ranging from the Eastern Mediterranean coast in Turkey and Lebanon to the western end in Morocco and Spain.

The diversity of honeybees will be comprehensively monitored and the colony resistance of bee colonies will be assessed, with new genetic information and markers to be generated, which will in turn be key to the selection of the resilient honeybee species.

The participation of the University of Malta is led by Dr Marion Zammit Mangion (Department of Physiology and Biochemistry) with the contributions of Dr Belinda Gambin (Institute of Earth Systems) and Dr Sandro Lanfranco (Department of Biology).

Thomas Galea, on behalf of Breeds of Origin and all local beekeepers, will also be contributing to the project and will be responsible for setting up the testing apiaries and conducting field studies on the native Maltese honeybee as well as non-native honeybees.

The role of the University of Malta in the project will be to lead a number of work packages and identify the major threats and challenges in the region and on the basis of the outcomes define the strategy that will be adopted by the Consortium.

The Maltese team will also carry out the mitochondrial tests of the genetic studies on all the honeybee subspecies investigated in the project.