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.
Tanneberger F., Tegetmeyer C., Busse S., Barthelmes A., Shumka S., Moles Mariné A., Jenderedjian K., Steiner G.M., Essl F., Etzold J., Mendes C., Kozulin A., Frankard P., Milanović D., Ganeva A., Apostolova I., Alegro A., Delipetrou P., Navrátilová J., Risager M., Leivits A., Fosaa A. M., Tuominen S., Muller F., Bakuradze T., Sommer M., Christanis K., Szurdoki E., Oskarsson H. , Brink S.H., Connolly J., Bragazza L., Martinelli G., Aleksāns O., Priede A., Sungaila D., Melovski L., Belous T., Saveljić D., de Vries F., Moen A., Dembek W., Mateus J., Hanganu J., Sirin A., Markina A., Napreenko M., Lazarević P., Šefferová Stanová V., Skoberne P., Heras Pérez P., Pontevedra-Pombal X., Lonnstad J., Küchler M., Wüst-Galley C., Kirca S., Mykytiuk O., Lindsay R., Joosten H.
Based on the ‘European Mires Book’ of the International Mire Conservation Group (IMCG), this article provides a composite map of national datasets as the first comprehensive peatland map for the whole of Europe. We also present estimates of the extent of peatlands and mires in each European country individually and for the entire continent. A minimum peat thickness criterion has not been strictly applied, to allow for (often historically determined) country-specific definitions. Our ‘peatland’ concept includes all ‘mires’, which are peatlands where peat is being formed. The map was constructed by merging national datasets in GIS while maintaining the mapping scales of the original input data. This ‘bottom-up’ approach indicates that the overall area of peatland in Europe is 593,727 km². Mires were found to cover more than 320,000 km² (around 54 % of the total peatland area). If shallow-peat lands (< 30 cm peat) in European Russia are also taken into account, the total peatland area in Europe is more than 1,000,000 km2, which is almost 10 % of the total surface area. Composite inventories of national peatland information, as presented here for Europe, may serve to identify gaps and priority areas for field survey, and help to cross-check and calibrate remote sensing based mapping approaches.
