Pollinator decline is driven by many overlapping pressures — habitat loss, disease and pesticide exposure among them. One of the most fixable of these is the timing mismatch between crop-protection spraying and pollinator foraging activity. Bees leave the hive only in daylight; if pesticide is applied while they are out working flowering crops, they carry it back to the colony. Simple, low-cost coordination between farmers and local beekeepers — sharing spray schedules, spraying at dawn or dusk when bees are inactive, and leaving untreated buffer strips — measurably cuts exposure.
Many UK and EU stewardship schemes now recommend spraying flowering crops in the early morning or evening, and some require growers to give local beekeepers advance notice — the same simple mechanism modelled here.
A 3D farm field and beehive where you control when and how long pesticide is applied, and how wide an untreated wildflower buffer is left, to see how coordinated spray-timing agreements between farmers and beekeepers keep foraging bees safe.
Bees forage only in daylight across the whole field, so pesticide applied at midday over a large treated crop area exposes many foragers, while spraying at dawn/dusk, a wide buffer zone, and advance notice to beekeepers all cut exposure sharply.
Set the spray hour and duration, adjust the untreated buffer width, and toggle whether beekeepers were notified in advance. Watch the sprayer sweep the crop, and track colony health and bees lost as the simulated day runs.
Stewardship schemes in the UK and EU increasingly recommend spraying flowering crops outside daylight foraging hours and notifying local beekeepers — the same low-cost coordination modelled here.