The data was published by Alves da Silva A, Alves J, Chytrý M, Sousa JP (UCOI) on the B-GOOD Bee Health Data Portal as part of the B-GOOD project (grant agreement 817622), funded under the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. It is part of Deliverable D3.1 of the project and focuses on the identification of the main plant species that are relevant food (floral) resources for honey bees, considering primarily nectar and pollen, that are present in each EUNIS habitat type in Europe.

The objectives of the B-GOOD project were: (1) Facilitate decision making for beekeepers and other stakeholders by establishing ready-to-use tools for operationalising the HSI; (2) Test, standardise and validate methods for measuring and reporting selected indicators affecting bee health; (3) Explore the various socio-economic and ecological factors beyond bee health; (4) Foster an EU community to collect and share knowledge related to honey bees and their environment; (5) Engender a lasting learning and innovation system (LIS); (6) Minimise the impact of biotic and abiotic stressors.

The dataset consists of 4 tables: BF Index EUNIS L2 (5.09 MB), Species Average Cover EUNIS L2 (5.10 MB), Species BF Value (642.15 KB) and Species Occurrence EUNIS L2 (5.07 MB). In addition it containms a metadata file (Honey Bee Resources - Database metadata.pdf).

The dataset complies with all the criteria that datasets archived on the EU Pollinator Hub have to comply with. Additional metadata that describes the methods used to calculate the various parameters (Bee-friendliness (BF) index, Average cover, Robustness, Occurrence) even better (e.g. links to documents, scientific articles) might be added and the publication Janovský Z. (2020) Pollinator spectrum. – www.pladias.cz mentioned in the metadata sheet should be reviewed, as it cannot be found on the link that was provided.

This Deliverable (D3.1) focuses on the identification of the main plant species that are relevant food (floral) resources for honey bees, considering primarily nectar and pollen, that are present in each EUNIS habitat type in Europe. The end product of deliverable D3.1 is a “Database of major crop, forest and wild species that compose each landscape element type and that are a relevant resource for honey bees”. This deliverable has a double function, being simultaneously a Report and a Database. These two standalone components (the Report and the Database) that can be consulted independently or together for further contextualization and details. The Report contains the methodology and an overview of the relevant resources for honey bees. The Database is currently deposited in the B-GOOD data portal (https://beehealthdata.org/) and follows the structure described in section 2.6 of the Report. The Database has the full details about plant species occurrence, average plant species cover and habitat plant species composition, together with the information about the bee-friendliness value of each plant (considering its characteristics independent of the habitat) but also the bee-friendliness of each plant species when considering its occurrence and cover within each habitat. The methods applied for this deliverable are presented and described in the Methodology section of the Report (section 2). After that section, an overview of the main resources for honey bees present in each habitat is shown in the Report (section 3). To contextualise the Deliverable, the integration of Task 3.1 within the entire WP3 strategy is initially explained in a comprehensive workflow diagram of WP3 in the Introduction section of the Report (section 1).

The main objective of WP3 is to develop a dynamic landscape model across the EU capturing the major floral resources for bees (flower resource model) considered a key driver of bee health status. To achieve this major goal, in task 3.1 the main landscape elements important for bees across Europe were identified and classified in terms of plant composition. In future tasks 3.2 and 3.3 the value in terms of pollen and nectar and phenology will be attributed. To identify the main landscape elements and their composition in terms of plant communities, several data sources and tools were used following the methodology presented in this report. It includes different procedures and data sources aiming to identify the plant composition of each landscape habitat, and to produce a database of major crop, forest and wild species that compose each landscape element type and that are a relevant resource for honey bees. This report and the associated database are the major outputs of task 3.1, and contain the identification and the ranking of plant species and habitats in terms of important resources for honey bees.

All raw data files were downloaded from the B-GOOD Bee Health Data Portal on 2024-09-26 18:15:28.

List of raw data obtained from the data provider.

1. File Database of Relevant Resources for Honey Bees.xlsx, accessed on 2024-09-26 18:15:28, provided by B-GOOD Bee Health Data Portal

Metadata was obtained from the dataset's web page.

All files in the zip-archives were extracted using File Explorer (Microsoft Corporation, version 22H2).

File Database of Relevant Resources for Honey Bees.xlsx was procesed with MS Excel (Microsoft Corporation, version 2409). Data from all worksheets containing data (Species Occurrence EUNIS L2, Species Occurrence EUNIS L2, Species Average Cover EUNIS L2 and BF Index EUNIS L2) were exported to a CSV format (UTF-8 encoding). Metadata in worksheet Metadata was exported in PDF formet. Data from files Species Occurrence EUNIS L2.CSV, Species Average Cover EUNIS L2.CSV and BF Index EUNIS L2.csv were unpivoted using the Python script UnpivotToCsv.py.

Data was then exported to the respective preparatory files and uploaded to the EU Pollinator Hub according to SOP-017 (Dataset integration.

No data validation was performed.

No data analysis was performed.

Table Species BF Value contains the bee-friendliness plant species value (BF Value) that corresponds to the bee-friendliness of each plant species for honey bees and the robustness (Robustness) value associated with it (see section 3.2 on Methodology for further details). It is organized as a full list of 8029 plant species and their taxonomic groups, namely family and genus. The list of species present in this sheet is based on a dataset of 233,352 vegetation plots from the European Vegetation Archive (version 2020-05-16), classified by the EUNIS ESy expert system (version 2020-06-08) and resampled in geographical grid cells from Chytrý et al. (2020).

• Column Species links to BF Index EUNIS L2.Species
• Column Species links to Species Average Cover EUNIS L2.Species
• Column Species links to Species Occurrence EUNIS L2.Species

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Table Species Occurrence EUNIS L2 contains the percentage occurrence frequency (Occurrence) that was calculated as the number of occurrences relative to the total number of plots assigned to each Level 2 habitat. This sheet has 8029 plant species (like the Species BF Value sheet) present at each EUNIS terrestrial Level 2 habitat. It is organized so the rows correspond to the plant species and the columns represent each EUNIS terrestrial Level 2 habitat that is spatially explicitly defined at the EU scale in the Ecosystem Type Map (ETM) v3.1 (Weiss and Banko, 2018) and that is defined in terms of vegetation composition.

• Column Species links to Species BF Value.Species
• Column Species links to Species Average Cover EUNIS L2.Species
• Column Species links to BF Index EUNIS L2.Species
• Column variable links to Species BF Value.BF Value
• Column variable links to Species Average Cover EUNIS L2.variable
• Column variable links to BF Index EUNIS L2.variable

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Table Species Average Cover EUNIS L2 contains the average cover (Average cover) that was calculated as the percentage cover averaged across all the plots assigned to the habitat, including the plots where a species was absent. This sheet has 8029 plant species (like the Species BF Value sheet) present at each EUNIS terrestrial Level 2 habitat. It is organized so the rows correspond to the plant species and the columns represent each EUNIS terrestrial Level 2 habitat that is spatially explicitly defined at the EU scale in the Ecosystem Type Map (ETM) v3.1 (Weiss and Banko, 2018) and that is defined in terms of vegetation composition.

• Column Species links to Species BF Value.Species
• Column Species links to Species Occurrence EUNIS L2.Species
• Column Species links to BF Index EUNIS L2.Species
• Column variable links to Species Occurrence EUNIS L2.variable
• Column variable links to BF Index EUNIS L2.variable

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Table BF Index EUNIS L2 contains the bee-friendliness index (BF Index) that corresponds to the contribution of each plant species in terms of bee-friendliness within a particular habitat (see section 2.4 of Methodology for further details). The BF index was calculated as the multiplication of the BF Value by occurrence and by average cover, i.e. BF Index = BF Value x Occurrence x Average cover. The higher the BF index, the greater the contribution of a plant species in terms of bee-friendliness within the habitat. This sheet has 8029 plant species (like the Species BF Value sheet) present at each EUNIS terrestrial Level 2 habitat. It is organized so the rows correspond to the plant species and the columns represent each EUNIS terrestrial Level 2 habitat that is spatially explicitly defined at the EU scale in the Ecosystem Type Map (ETM) v3.1 (Weiss and Banko, 2018) and that is defined in terms of vegetation composition.

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