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Organic berry production suffers heavily from lack of effective disease control and from inadequate insect pollination. BICOPOLL is a European study on protection of strawberries from their most important disease, the grey mould (Botrytis cinerea), using spores of fungus Gliocladium catenulatum in Prestop Mix (PM). G. catenulatum, which acts as an antagonist of grey mould, was delivered to strawberry flowers using honeybees. Bees gathered PM in a dispenser placed at the exit of the hive and delivered it to the flowers. A colony of Apis mellifera carnica honeybees was placed next to a 0.5 ha strawberry field in NW Slovenia during May and June of 2013 and 2014. Foraging activity and yield were monitored in eight experimental plots (4 treated and 4 controls) at different distances from the bee colony. Number of honeybees on strawberry flowers was counted four times a day. Bees visited the strawberry flowers despite alternative food sources close to the field. The visits were more frequent in warm weather and in the afternoons. Each year at the end of the flowering season, the healthy and the mouldy berries were collected from each plot and weighed. In 2013, the use of PM resulted in a 50% increase of the ratio of healthy berries over the mouldy ones. In 2014, no statistically significant differences between treated and untreated plots were found, presumably due to lower foraging activity of bees in cold and rainy weather in the flowering period. The results showed that, in favourable weather conditions, entomovectoring is an effective method for delivering biocontrol agents to flowers.

BICOPOLL is a European study on protecting organic strawberries from the most important disease, the grey mould (Botrytis cinerea), using biological control. Honeybees are used to deliver biological fungicide Prestop® Mix (PM) containing biological control agent fungi Gliocladium catenulatum to the flowers to provide control of diseases. Bees gathered PM in a dispenser exit placed at the hive entrance and delivered it to the flowers. The effect of PM on the behaviour of the honeybee was studied. The behaviour of foragers in dispenser was observed by two video cameras. PM reduced the number of direct crossings of the dispenser and bees were trying to avoid it. Changes were the most obvious in the first hour, and then subsided. In homing ability experiment the treated and untreated bees were released from a distance of 40 m from the hive. Results showed prolonged flights in bees that were exposed to PM but did not affect returning rate until evening. The effect of exposure to PM on learning and memory was tested using olfactory conditioning of proboscis extension reflex (PER). Bees were conditioned to the olfactory stimulus once and tested for PER response by presenting odour alone 1 or 12 min after conditioning. Before learning experiment responsiveness to ascending sucrose solution was tested to see whether bees differ in sucrose responsiveness which affects learning abilities. The results did not confirm any effect. We suggest some improvements of the dispenser to decrease affects of PM on behavior of honeybees.