Developing the National Honey Monitoring Scheme as a framework for pesticide monitoring in support of the H4 indicators

Pollinating insects play an important role in ecosystems and provide a crucial service to the agricultural sectors, worth £0.5 billion in terms of agricultural yield improvements in the UK. The causes for pollinator declines are diverse, although pesticide exposure is a potentially significant factor. Both the 25 Year Environment Plan (25YEP) and the draft new National Action Plan (NAP) for sustainable use of pesticides call for the development of improved metrics/indicators. Part of the 25YEP outcome indicator framework is the H4 Indicator that aims to provide an assessment of the exposure and adverse effects of chemicals on wildlife in the environment. A recommendation from the Hazardous Substances Advisory Committee in relation for H4 has been to strengthen effects-based measures and provide more evidence on terrestrial taxa. As such, new approaches are needed for cost effective assessment of ongoing pesticide exposure in the wider environment. The UK National Honey Monitoring Scheme (NHMS) was conceived as a national scale long-term repository of honey samples that would be archived in a controlled manner. Honey is provided from across the UK with > 1100 samples being submitted annually. The NHMS provides an opportunity to develop a cost-effective monitoring programme for assessing long-term trends in the exposure to pesticides of honey bees under normal field conditions. This report scopes the viability of making this scheme into a H4 indicator and builds on initial pilot work undertaken in 2021 by Defra assessing the occurrence of pesticide residues from honey samples collected in 2019.