The 20th COLOSS conference took place in Wageningen, NL, from the 11th of November until the 13th of November 2024. The organisation of the conference was a joint effort by the University of Wageningen and the COLOSS team. All meetings and plenaries were held in the Wicc, Wageningen International Congress Centre B.V in the city of Wageningen.
The conference had 112 participants in person and 103 persons who opted for the hybrid option. Participants joined on site and online from 58 different countries.
The conference was divided into several blocks:
- General Assembly I - Welcome by the president, voting for open topic discussion and keynote speech. Prof. Dr Geoff Williams held the keynote speech on Tropilaelaps mercedesae: a looming threat on the horizon for Apis mellifera outside of Asia.
- Presentation of each Core Project (CP) and Task Force (TF) concerning an update on their activities since the last conference.
- Meeting of TFs and CPs in dedicated rooms and time slots. Each CP/TF chair organised the hybrid links and participation themselves. The groups that met in person on the first evening and second morning were:
a) B-RAP CP
b) MONITORING CP
c) Varroa control TF
d) Small hive beetle TF
e) Vespid TF
f) World Honeybee Health TF
g) RNSBB TF
h) Viruses TF
i) Nutrition TF
j) BEEBOOK CP - On the first evening, students presented their posters in the poster session room and a committee decided after evaluation on the student's best poster prize winner.
- The second day started with break-out sessions of the CPs and TFs and the option to discuss a third topic, that had been voted on. It was decided to answer open questions and discuss further the Tropilaelaps topic from the keynote speech amongst others.
- The last part of the conference was the CP/TF update on plans and outcomes from their single sessions on days 1 and 2. Furthermore, the General Assembly was held, which comprised the financial reporting as well as votes on open questions, which were:
a) Decisions on plans and budgeting for the next year
b) approval of financial statement and auditor’s report
c) BEEScholars: Boosting Education and Extension of Fellow Scholars by Aygün Schiesser
- After the organisational and financial parts, the conference was closed with the ceremony of the best student poster prize (Tal Erez / Viral Infection and Chemical Cues in Honey Bee Pupae), Ceremony of the Panuwan award (Asia Piovesan: Genetic diversity and pesticide tolerance in honeybee colonies; Caio Eduardo da Costa Domingues: Sensitivity differences between Apis mellifera carnica and Bombus terrestris after insecticide and fungicide exposure; Karen Power: Do electric harps reduce Vespa orientalis predation on honey bee colonies?).
During our meeting, we had excellent discussions with Flemming Vejsnæs and Antonio Nanetti, local organizer contacts of upcoming Apimondia and Eurobee coming up, respectively. As an outlook for our 2025 conference, it will take place in Kopenhagen, Denmark in September, just prior to Apimondia. Our 2026 conference will take place alongside Eurbee in Bologna.
The full proceedings of the conference can be found here:
The COLOSS executive committee expresses its warmest thanks to the Eva Crane Trust for its financial support to the success of the event! Also, the COLOSS conference organisational committee is very thankful for the great collaboration with our colleagues from Wageningen University, who did a great job!
We are looking forward to our next conference in Copenhagen from 22.-23. September in collaboration with the APIMONDIA congress that will take place right after at the same venue.
Elise Maria Keller, COLOSS association
Ref.: ECT_20240601
Completed 2024