Konstantinos M. Kasiotis
Konstantinos M. Kasiotis is an Research Director at the Benaki Phytopathological Institute (BPI) in Athens, Greece
As a chemist, his research interest largely revolves around pesticide residues, including determining pesticide residues in bees, pollen and honey. As PLANT-B’s Project Coordinator, Dr. Kasiotis is responsible for the overall scientific and administrative coordination of the project
1) What are the biggest threats to honeybees in Greece?
The threats to bees are multifactorial, in Greece and elsewhere. I am neither an agronomist nor a bee expert, but I know that one of the most profound factors of mortality in honeybees is the Varroa mite. Issues related to nutrition of bees is also a problem, as well as pesticide concentration when encountered, even though it remains difficult to assess direct honey bee mortality considering pesticides alone.
2) Could you elaborate on BPI’s honey and citrus quality analysis as part of PLANT-B?
BPI has established analytical methodologies to study the sugars and bioactive compounds content in honey. Sugar contents are crucially important because they can give us information about the general quality of the product. We need to analyze honey for sugars, and for bioactive compounds (flavonoids, phenolic acids, terpenes etc.). We have established a new analytical tool for sugars, which is now operational. This month, we will be able to analyze the first samples.
On the one hand, we have assigned the pollen identification analysis to a subcontractor, and we do here the whole spectrum of the mentioned chemical analyses. Hence, the other major task focuses on bioactive compounds. In some cases and in some type of honey in Greece, some pupas are stressed. So if you manage to identify these compounds and the potential differentiation in concentration, you can start to understand the whole story. This is why we need to perform the whole array of analyses in order to have a clear view. Last but not least, our partner from the University of Tuscia will perform the trace elements and metals analysis in honey, which is also crucial.
3) Ideally, the result you are trying to achieve is to demonstrate that the adoption of PLANT-B’s innovating mixed farming system will lead to higher citrus and honey quality, is that correct?
Yes, this is the ideal scenario. Of course, this will largely depend on the results we obtain. For example, in terms of honey production, we want to see that bees feed not only on the citrus blooms but also on the aromatic plants, and produce honey from that combination. But this is something that only the results can tell us.
4) Are you going to receive and analyze samples of honey bees and honey from other stakeholder countries ?
Yes, we will obtain samples from the other case studies in Egypt and Italy that we will study at our labs at BPI. The results will give us an overview of this year as a baseline year for the rest of the project, and assess the prevalence of pesticides in citrus. We also began analyzing pesticides found in honey. We will receive citrus and honey samples for sure, and potentially samples of bees themselves if an incident or an anomaly occurs. Just a few weeks ago, here in Greece, we found some dead bees outside of a hive that we collected for further analysis. But this won’t be part of our day to day work, we will only study reported incidents. We could also collect pollen from the case studies in Egypt and Italy and potentially analyze that as well.