Institut für Bienenschutz
To counteract mixtures of insecticides and a potential threat to honey bees in practice, the BVL recommended in a technical report (2015) that "to protect bees tank mixtures of several plant protection products from the group of insecticides should not be applied on flowering plants or plants to which bees fly even if the mixing partners are classified as harmless to bees." However, in order to achieve sufficient effectiveness, organic farming relies on such tank mixes to control pests. The mixtures of different insecticides and acaricides used represent a mixture of products with unknown effects on honey bees that is not taken into account in the risk assessment of plant protection products. Since organic fruit farming often works with modular strategies that result in tank mixtures, it is relatively severely affected by this technical report. In a first approach, the two tank mixtures that are currently of the most significant relevance for the overall strategy of organic fruit growing are to be evaluated. On the one hand, this is the mixture of potassium bicarbonate (Kumar preparation also approved against pear leaf suckers) and wetted sulfur (also approved against rust mites), which is particularly relevant for replacing copper in summer applications. Furthermore, a mixture of Neudosan NEU and Micula (at half the application rate) will be tested. This mixture is used as a replacement for the mixture of Neudosan NEU and Trifolio-S forte developed in the INSEKTOEKOOBST project. Trifolio-S-forte must no longer be mixed with insecticides. The risk to bees of these tank mixtures must therefore be clarified in order to be able to give practical recommendations.
Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture
