Correction: Corrigendum: 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...

Correction: Neonicotinoid-Contaminated Puddles of Water Represent a Risk of Intoxication for Honey Bees

In recent years, populations of honey bees and other pollinators have been reported to be in decline worldwide. A number of stressors have been identified as potential contributing factors, including the extensive prophylactic use of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are highly toxic to bees, in agriculture. While multiple routes of exposure to these systemic insecticides have been documented f...

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...