The National Honey Monitoring Scheme 

What do they do? 

With the help of beekeepers they collect honey samples from across the UK and have been doing so since 2018. These samples are analysed using advanced DNA barcoding techniques to identify the species of plant pollen present. This tells them what bees are feeding on in different parts of the country and at different times of year. This information helps them identify possible threats to the floral resources of pollinating insects.

All of the honey samples beekeepers send them are carefully archived to enable future investigations of other threats to bees, including pesticide residues and the presence of certain bee diseases.

Plant identification using DNA barcoding of honey samples is reliant upon sequencing a small, specific area of DNA. These are then compared to a large database of reference sequences to identify the likely plant species present.  They also provide an estimate of relative abundance of each species (or higher taxonomic levels) present in a honey sample, based on the quantity of DNA fragments present.

 https://honey-monitoring.ac.uk/

In September 2022 Isle of Ely Honey sent samples of honey from one of our hives for DNA sequencing and here are the results!