An Evaluation of the BEEHAVE Model Using Honey Bee Field Study Data: Insights and Recommendations

Abstract A lack of standard and internationally agreed procedures for higher‐tier risk assessment of plant protection products for bees makes coherent availability of data, their interpretation, and their use for risk assessment challenging. Focus has been given to the development of modeling approaches, which in the future could fill this gap. The BEEHAVE model, and its submodels, is the first model framework attempting to link 2 processes vital for the assessment of bee colonies: the within‐hive dynamics for honey bee colonies and bee foraging in heterogeneous and dynamic landscapes. We use empirical data from a honey bee field study to conduct a model evaluation using the control data set. Simultaneously, we are testing several model setups for the interlinkage between the within‐hive dynamics and the landscape foraging module. Overall, predictions of beehive dynamics fit observations made in the field. This result underpins the European Food Safety Authority's evaluation of the BEEHAVE model that the most important in‐hive dynamics are represented and correctly implemented. We show that starting conditions of a colony drive the simulated colony dynamics almost entirely within the first few weeks, whereas the impact is increasingly substituted by the impact of foraging activity. Common among field studies is that data availability for hive observations and landscape characterizations is focused on the proportionally short exposure phase (i.e., the phase where colony starting conditions drive the colony dynamics) in comparison to the postexposure phase that lasts several months. It is vital to redistribute experimental efforts toward more equal data aquisition throughout the experiment to assess the suitability of using BEEHAVE for the prediction of bee colony overwintering survival. Environ Toxicol Chem 2019;38:2535–2545. © 2019 The Authors. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of SETAC