Published date: 11 October 2024

Awarded contract - This means that the contract has been awarded to a supplier.


Closing: 25 October 2024, 12pm

Contract summary

Industry

  • Research and development consultancy services - 73200000

Location of contract

Any region

Value of contract

£103,570.49

Procurement reference

CF-0381400D8d000003VQwdEAG

Published date

11 October 2024

Closing date

25 October 2024

Closing time

12pm

Contract start date

1 November 2024

Contract end date

21 March 2025

Contract type

Service contract

Procedure type

Call-off from a framework agreement

A mini-competition or direct purchase from a pre-established framework agreement.

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

Yes

Description

Pollinating insects play an important role in ecosystems and provide a crucial service to the agricultural, horticultural, and gardening sectors. Pollinators provide approximately £0.5 billion to the UK in ecosystem services from agricultural yield improvements alone (Steele et al., 2019). However, UK pollinators are in decline, and they are vulnerable to impacts from pesticide use, which has been shown to influence bee behavior and survival (Stanley et al., 2015).

In addition to honeybees, there are at least 1500 species of insect pollinators in the UK including c. 250 species of bee. Honeybees are normally managed in hives by beekeepers, although wild colonies can exist. Others, like many species of bumblebees, solitary bees, moths, butterflies and hoverflies, live in the wild. Additional data and research are required to understand the impact of pesticides on honeybees and other pollinators. This is particularly true for understanding the post-authorisation exposure risk seen by honeybees under real world field conditions, which are hard to predict in the conventional ecotoxicology phases of the regulatory process.

The National Honey Monitoring Scheme (NHMS) collects honey samples from across the UK from volunteer beekeepers, and currently has an archive of c> 3000 temporally and spatially explicit samples. Whilst these honey samples are not routinely tested for pesticides as part of the NHMS programme, this resource has been developed and trialed through Defra funded projects over the past four years as a cost-effective monitoring programme for assessing long-term trends in the quantified exposure of pesticides to honeybees under normal field conditions.

Award information

Awarded date

10 October 2024

Contract start date

1 November 2024

Contract end date

21 March 2025

Total value of contract

£103,570.49

This contract was awarded to 1 supplier.

UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH)

Address

Maclean Building, Benson Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford, Wallingford OX10 8BB

Reference

None

Supplier is SME?

No

About the buyer

Contact name

Adrian Ajibade

Address

17 Smith Square
London
SW1P 3JR
UK

Email

adrian.ajibade@defra.gov.uk