After bee colonies fed on pollen spiked with
the pesticides thiamethoxam and clothianidin, male bees, or drones, produced almost 40 percent fewer living sperm than did males from colonies fed clean pollen, researchers report July 27 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
After bee colonies fed on pollen spiked with
the pesticides thiamethoxam and clothianidin, male bees, or drones, produced almost 40 percent fewer living sperm than did males from colonies fed clean pollen, researchers report July 27 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The...
A study published April 26 in Scientific Reports by UC San Diego postdoctoral researcher Simone Tosi, Biology Professor James Nieh, along with Associate Professor Giovanni Burgio of the University of Bologna, Italy, describes in detail how the neonicotinoid
pesticide thiamethoxam damages honey bees.
Not exact matches
Neuroscientist Christopher Connolly of the University of Dundee, UK, who has studied the effect of neonicotinoids in bee brains, says that the control colonies themselves were contaminated with the
pesticides, and that
thiamethoxam was detected in two of the three bee groups tested, even though it was not used in the experiment.
The study is the first to link exposure to
thiamethoxam — one of the most commonly used neonicotinoid
pesticides — to fewer fully developed eggs in queens from four wild bumblebee species that forage in farmland.
The fact that queen feeding behavior was impacted by exposure to
thiamethoxam in only two of the four bee species highlights the reality that sensitivity to
pesticides differs among bee species, added Raine.
The researchers found that across all four species the queen bees that were given higher doses of
thiamethoxam had smaller, less - developed eggs than the queens not exposed to the
pesticide.
They then administered small does of a different neonicotinoid
pesticide, called
thiamethoxam, to a portion of the bees.