🚜 Pesticide Spray Notification and Incident Reporting

About this simulation

UK arable land often sits close to registered apiaries. Under the Voluntary Initiative and good agricultural practice, farmers are encouraged to give beekeepers advance notice (commonly 48 hours) before spraying insecticides near hives — for example via the BeeConnected app or a local National Bee Unit (NBU) hive register — so that beekeepers can close entrances, relocate colonies, or cover forage. This scene shows a tractor spraying a field beside an apiary, with a drift plume carried by the wind toward (or away from) the hives.

How it works

• Distance to hives — closer apiaries receive more spray drift and higher exposure risk.
• Wind direction — when wind blows from the field toward the hives, drift risk rises sharply; a tailwind away from hives lowers it.
• Spray time of day — bees forage most at midday; spraying in the early morning or evening, when foragers are inside the hive, cuts direct contact risk.
• Prior notice — advance notification lets the beekeeper shut hives or move them, roughly halving realised risk even under otherwise risky conditions.
• The risk beacon above the hives turns green (low), amber (medium) or red (high) as you change parameters — this drives whether the workflow should escalate to a formal incident report.

Workflow

• 1. Spray detected — a spray event begins near the apiary.
• 2. Check notification — was the beekeeper told in advance?
• 3. Assess risk — combine distance, wind, timing and notice into a risk level.
• 4. Report if needed — suspected bee poisoning is reported to the Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme (WIIS), run by the CRD/HSE with support from the NBU, so inspectors can sample and investigate.

Did you know?

WIIS is free to use and open to any member of the public in the UK — you do not need to be a beekeeper to report suspected pesticide poisoning of bees or other wildlife.