Brazilian bee observatory: program to mitigate losses of bee colonies.

Bees are essential for maintaining the pollination ecosystem service, necessary forbiodiversity conservation and agricultural growth. However, the decline of pollinators on a globalscale became part of the 2030 agenda, based on the inclusion of pollinators in the SustainableDevelopment Goals established by the UN. In Brazil, bee deaths in different states indicate theneed to identify the causes of incidents, as well as to link this information in a systematic way onan official public platform. In this context the Brazilian Bee Observatory Program, coordinated byEMBRAPA Environment (Jaguariuna, SP, Brazil) together with the Ministério da Agricultura ePecuária, in collaboration with public and private agents, has the mission of supporting actions tomitigate bee deaths in the country, and OBJECTIVES: 1) Strengthen the systematization ofassistance with bee deaths by public agents; 2) Consolidate the records in an Official DataIntegration Platform (POD), with the possibility of establishing a causal link with the agents thatcaused the incidents; 3) Support laboratories dedicated to animal health and detection of pesticidesin bees; 4) Support training actions in good agricultural and beekeeping practices, and dialoguebetween those involved in the theme; 5) Stimulate the registration of apiaries/meliponary to officialinstitutions; 6) Support the development of public policies based on POD data for the protection ofpollinators. The implementation of the Observatory started in August/2022, and the first phaseincluded the diagnosis regarding the resources to deal with incidents with bees with the assistancenetwork of Brazilian states (RS, SC, PR, SP, MS, MT, GO). The second phase, currently underway,is the construction of the POD, an application for use in the field with forms on bee mortality,georeferenced data, and an interface with WebGis for disseminating the data on dashboards. Thesubsequent phases will contemplate the implementation of the POD, training of human resourcesand discussions with different sectors of society aiming to mitigate the deaths of bees in Brazil.The initial steps of the Program inspire optimism, and advances are dynamic and dependent onofficial data records in the POD.