Two new studies as part of an EU-funded project, the STEP project, have published their findings on the ways to conserve Europe's pollinators and to ensure they continue to deliver pollination services to crops and wildflowers.

Two new studies as part of STEP ('Status and Trends of European Pollinators') project, which is supported in part by a €3.5 million funding under the 'Environment' Theme of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), have published their findings on the ways to conserve Europe's pollinators and ensure they continue to deliver pollination services to crops and wildflowers.

One of the recent published studies suggests that honeybees may not be as important to pollination services in the United Kingdom as was previously thought. The study authors put the long held assumption that honeybees played an integral role in pollination to test. According to Dr Potts, the first thought is that a severe deficit in honeybees would cause massive loss of crop productivity. However, examining yields of these crops since the 80's, they have just kept going up. While some of that is down to better production systems, other species have probably stepped in to fill the gap left by honeybees.

On the other hand, the second study found that many fruits and vegetables rich in vitamins and minerals essential for a healthy human diet, are heavily dependent on bees and other pollinating animals. It shows that animal-pollinated crops the world over contain the majority of the available dietary lipid, vitamin A, C and E, and a large portion of the minerals calcium, fluoride and iron. In conclusion, any threat to these animal pollinators therefore has obvious implications for human nutrition.

The STEP project is studying the causes of pollinator declines including habitat loss, climate change, diseases, invasive species and pesticides. Early results suggest that it is a combination of several of these pressures on pollinators that have resulted in the massive losses of wild bees and honeybees. In this context, another study has linked two of these causes: European scientists proved how low doses of insecticides put honeybees at risk.