Through our honey bee health monitoring services within our network of commercial beekeepers in BIP’s Tech Transfer Team program and backyard beekeepers in BIP’s Sentinel Apiary Program, BIP is well positioned to test management practices, products, and answer scientific questions in real-world operations. Our highly trained, impartial Technical Transfer Team Field Specialists test new or developmental products, effectiveness in real world settings of existing products, or new management techniques. We are a one-stop shop for all your field testing needs as we can develop scientific methodologies and experimental designs, conduct field trials and perform statistical analyses and reporting. Results of field trials are made available to the public.
Example Projects
- Effectiveness of product on prevention of pathogen/diseases
- Validation study of a new technology to answer a scientific question
- Effectiveness of a management technique in different beekeeping contexts (pollination event, honey production, forage)
- Comparison of supplemental feed products
Funding
We serve as an objective third party and as such we do NOT receive payment or funding from a party who stands to gain or lose financially from the results of a field trial. We prefer to contract directly with beekeeping organizations to perform trials to ensure that the work represents the interests of beekeepers and that the results benefit beekeepers.
Our Network and Confidentiality
Over the years BIP has built the trust of beekeepers and the industry by maintaining their confidentiality. We never share identifying data of the beekeepers with which we work. While we will share results of the trials publically, we will not share data that can be traced back to a particular beekeeper without their express permission. Please consider the following parameters:
- BIP does not own or manage any honey bee colonies.
- BIP usually performs trials within commercial beekeeping operations and are restrained to use commercial beekeeping equipment.
- Working with real-world commercial honey bee colonies, BIP cannot infect colonies with diseases to test in-field effectiveness of a product. BIP is limited to test effectiveness of products on disease prevention or more challengingly finding colonies already affected by a pathogen and performing trials on those in isolation.
- In a research trial, BIP does not share beekeeping data outside of public field trial data and always without identifiers.
Next Steps
We would be delighted to discuss your ideas further if you think your project can fit within our guidelines/policies:
- Bee Informed Partnership periodically performs field trials or contract work for beekeeping organizations. Our highly trained, impartial Technical Transfer Team Field Specialists will test new or developmental products, effectiveness in real world settings of existing products, or new management techniques. Additionally, our known expertise in epidemiological models and statistical analyses are utilized in several contracts.
- As part of our policy to maintain an unbiased perspective, we require that product manufacturers have a third party provide funding for testing any product in a field trial. These projects are generally very expensive and do not always yield the results the manufacturer expects, so BIP chooses to work directly with beekeeper interest groups when testing products.
- If you feel you are a candidate for BIP to test your product and would like to discuss things further, please complete the Request Form.
Request Form
As with all of our data, the Bee Informed Partnership (BIP) is responsible for all source data and holds the copyright for all information presented here. All of the results generated by BIP and published here represent an unbiased assessment of any product or process, and BIP results are not endorsements of commercial products, protocols, or services. Unless stated otherwise, BIP supports the reproduction and reuse of these results, publications and figures for scientific and educational purposes, at no cost, provided that BIP’s ownership, copyright and non-endorsement status are acknowledged. When citing any of the information, figures, or other material sourced from the BIP website, unless it has been published elsewhere as a journal article, please also include in your citation: the year published (when available), title, web address, and date obtained.