Photo: Innotata
Last winter, roughly a third of commercial bee colonies in the United States died off—a staggering percentage in the already unsustainable population decline first observed in 2006. The rapid global disappearance of bee colonies known as colony collapse disorder (CCD) has serious repercussions for food production worldwide.
“One in three mouthfuls of our food depends on bee pollination,” said Dr. John Bryden, the lead author of a new study funded by the Insect Pollination Initiative. “By understanding the way colonies fail and die, we’ve made a crucial step in being able to link bee declines to pesticides and other factors, such as habitat loss and disease which can all contribute to colony failure.”
Bryden’s research team at Royal Holloway University discovered that exposure to low levels of neonicotinoid pesticides subtly affects the behavior of bees. The pesticide is not directly lethal, but because it’s a neuroactive chemical, it has an obvious effect on the mental state of individuals. The bees become stressed out by the presence of the pesticide, dramatically impeding their ability to properly maintain their hives.
“Exposing bees to pesticides is a bit like adding more and more weight on someone’s shoulders,” explains Bryden. “A person can keep walking normally under a bit of weight, but when it gets too much—they collapse. Similarly, bee colonies can keep growing when bees aren’t too stressed, but if stress levels get too high the colony will eventually fail.”
A healthy commercial hive. Photo: Björn Appel
Pesticides are just one of many threats to healthy bee populations. Earlier this week, a team at the University of Southampton published a study in Scientific Reports about the effect of diesel fumes on bee behavior. Led by Dr. Tracey Newman and Professor Guy Poppy, the team discovered that diesel exhaust can alter the profile of floral odors, which confuses honey bees and reduces their foraging efficiency.
Bees Get "Blinded" by Polluted Scents: New Insights into Colony Collapse Disorder
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