Dead Bees Tell a Tale of Dozens of Pesticides

takepart.com

As bee colonies continue to collapse worldwide, a team of European researchers has found that poisoned bees carry a lethal cocktail of dozens of different pesticides.

“It is the broadest spectrum of pesticides and their metabolites till now detected in honeybees,” according to the study, which appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Chromatography A.

Bees are among the world's most important crop pollinators, responsible for roughly one in three mouthfuls of food grown in the United States alone.

A February report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services warned that human activities are putting 40 percent of invertebrate species, which include bees, along with 16 percent of vertebrate pollinators, at risk of extinction. The pressure on pollinators could endanger 75 percent of the world's food supply, the report found.

The findings are an important step toward pinning down which pesticides and chemical interactions may be causing bee colonies to collapse, according to toxicologist Tomasz Kiljanek of the National Veterinary Research Institute in Poland, who led the study.

Colony collapse rates have surpassed 30 percent in Europe, Kiljanek and his colleagues noted in the study, and are higher than 40 percent in the United States. 

“Even at very low levels, pesticides can weaken bees’ defense systems, allowing parasites or viruses to kill the colony,” Kiljanek said in a statement.