Modellers from the WIDER group at Warwick have been assisting EFSA (the European Food Safety Authority) with their work on studying the small hive beetle outbreak, which began in Italy in September 2014 with an eradication program currently in place.

Samik Datta has been building mathematical models for the spread of small hive beetle in Italy, using positive and negative inspection data provided by the Italian authorities from visits carried out in the affected regions (Sicily and Calabria, in the south of Italy) since the beetle was first detected in September 2014. The output from these predictive models are helping to estimate the likelihood of eradication, along with the time taken to reach uninfested areas in Italy and the effectiveness of different control strategies.