The use of antibiotics is not permitted in Switzerland; moreover, no other medication exists to combat European foul brood. Hives with symptoms must therefore be destroyed in order to limit the outbreak, and the contaminated material must be sanitised. Since prevention is the best cure, early detection is desirable. Numerous studies have been undertaken and documents have been created at the Swiss Bee Research Centre and elsewhere to draw the attention of beekeepers to these problems and inform them about the causes and the control measures to be implemented.
MacLaren C., Mead A., van Balen D., Claessens L., Etana A., de Haan J., Haagsma W., Jäck O., Keller T., Labuschagne J., Myrbeck Å., Necpalova M., Nziguheba G., Six J., Strauss J., Swanepoel P.A., Thierfelder C., Topp C., Tshuma F., Verstegen H., Walker R., Watson C., Wesselink M., Strokey J.
Long-term evidence for ecological intensification as a pathway to sustainable agriculture.
Ecological intensification (EI) could help return agriculture into a ‘safe operating space’ for humanity. Using a novel application of meta-analysis to data from 30 long-term experiments from Europe and Africa (comprising 25,565 yield records), we investigated how field-scale EI practices interact with each other, and with N fertilizer and tillage, in their effects on long-term crop yields. Here we confirmed that EI practices (specifically, increasing crop diversity and adding fertility crops and organic matter) have generally positive effects on the yield of staple crops. However, we show that EI practices have a largely substitutive interaction with N fertilizer, so that EI practices substantially increase yield at low N fertilizer doses but have minimal or no effect on yield at high N fertilizer doses. EI practices had comparable effects across different tillage intensities, and reducing tillage did not strongly affect yields.
