Bee foraging skills impaired by neonicotinoid pesticides

[MohRokTah]

I'd like to see this study duplicated, however, the test methodology appears solid and the conclusions are striking. RFID studies of bees have been providing all sorts of new knowledge in how the foraging of bees occurs and has become a wide open field for study.

This article is based upon an abstract published in Functional Ecology (available via Wiley Online Library).

Bee foraging skills impaired by neonicotinoid pesticides

RFID tags used to keep tabs on individual bees

By Emily Chung, CBC News Posted: Jul 08, 2014 7:00 PM ET Last Updated: Jul 09, 2014 11:52 AM ET

Popular pesticides linked to declines in bee populations appear to harm bumblebees by impairing their ability to learn how to gather food, new research shows.

Young adult bumblebees normally take some time to learn how to land on flowers, collect pollen and pack it onto their legs so they can carry it back to their hive, said Nigel Raine, a professor and bee researcher at the University of Guelph.

While bees usually come back to the hive with more and more pollen as they become more experienced foragers, a new study conducted by Raine and Imperial College biologist Richard Gill shows that isn't the case for bees exposed to neonicotinoid pesticides.

"They started off worse than control, unexposed individuals and they never got any better — and in some cases actually their performance deteriorated," Raine said in an interview. "This kind of suggests that something is not allowing them to continue the normal process of learning how to handle flowers and collect pollen."

...

The results suggests bumblebees are quite sensitive to neonicotinoids, Raine said. He added that they are likely more sensitive than honeybees, since their colonies are so much smaller — hundreds of individuals rather than the tens of thousands seen in honeybee colonies.

...

CBC News Science and Technology link

[MohRokTah]

1. as I said in my post, it appears the methodology for the test was solid.

This is from the abstract:

Pesticide treatment
For the sucrose treatment, we dissolved 100mg of imidacloprid (C9H10CIN5O2 powder; grade: PESTANAL®, analytical standard; brand: Fluka) in 100ml of acetone to produce a primary stock solution (1mg/ml). An aliquot of the primary stock solution was added to a 40/60% sucrose/water (volume/volume) solution to produce a 10μg/L (10ppb) imidacloprid solution. A control solution was made by repeating this process but using an acetone stock solution (without imidacloprid). For the spray treatment, we dissolved 100mg of λ-cyhalothrin (C23H19CIF3NO3 powder; grade: PESTANAL®, analytical standard; brand: Fluka) in 100ml of acetone to produce a primary stock solution (1mg/ml). An aliquot of this stock solution was diluted with distilled water to produce a 37.5mg/L (37.5ppm) solution. A control solution was made by repeating this process but using an acetone stock solution (without λ-cyhalothrin).

This demonstrates to me they were very careful to stay well below what is considered a lethal dosage of each pesticide for the purposes of the study.

[logosoco]

2. K&R

This reminds me of how stupid our society has become. One person tries to bomb a plane with a shoe bomb, and everywhere people have to take off their shoes before getting on a plane. Scientists have known for years something is happening to the bee population, and right here is a study showing why, and NOTHING CHANGES!

edit: spelling

[jen63]

3. Not many things scare me

but this truly does. I live in rural Ohio and I haven't seen a honey bee for years. I know they must be around, but I haven't seen them. No true bumblebees either, just those brown and yellow wood borers.