Bees prefer foods containing neonicotinoid pesticides

Neonicotinoid insecticides and bees

Pesticides and bees.

In May 2013, the European Commission (EC) adopted a 2-year restriction on the use of three neonicotinoid pesticides – clothianidin and imidacloprid, both produced by Bayer, and thiametoxam, produced by Syngenta – on crops that attract bees and other pollinators to protect declining populations of pollinating bees. The decision was based on a risk assessment by the European Food Safety Authority...

Bees and Pesticides

Honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) are the main pollinating agents for numerous plants and fruit trees and hence, play a key role in agriculture and more generally in the maintenance of ecological biodiversity. They are mostly affected farm animals by pesticides. Indeed, pesticides work in two ways to reduce bee populations. First, many pesticides used in crop production are highly toxic to these s...

Neonicotinoid pesticides severely affect honey bee queens

Queen health is crucial to colony survival of social bees. Recently, queen failure has been proposed to be a major driver of managed honey bee colony losses, yet few data exist concerning effects of environmental stressors on queens. Here we demonstrate for the first time that exposure to field-realistic concentrations of neonicotinoid pesticides during development can severely affect queens of...

Why do Varroa mites prefer nurse bees?

The Varroa mite, Varroa destructor, is an acarine ecto-parasite on Apis mellifera. It is the worst pest of Apis mellifera, yet its reproductive biology on the host is not well understood. In particular, the significance of the phoretic stage, when mites feed on adult bees for a few days, is not clear. In addition, it is not clear whether the preference of mites for nurses observed in the labora...