Honeybee Pollen Contains More Pesticides Than Scientists Expected
It's only natural that Honeybees get exposed from pesticides found in agricultural crops, especially those that live next to fields of these commercial produce. But, a Purdue University study recently published in the journal Nature Communications, has found that honeybee pollen contains a wider variety of pesticides that are also found from non-agricultural plants.
In fact, the authors of the study concluded that honeybees, even those that live next to corn and soybean fields, gather more pollens from non-agricultural plants and are exposed from more types of chemicals like urban pesticide.
"Although crop pollen was only a minor part of what they collected, bees in our study were exposed to a far wider range of chemicals than we expected," said entomology professor Christian Krupke, via a Purdue University news release. "The sheer numbers of pesticides we found in pollen samples were astonishing."
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"Agricultural chemicals are only part of the problem. Homeowners and urban landscapes are big contributors, even when hives are directly adjacent to crop fields," he also added.
Krupke, together with Elizabeth Long who is an assistant professor of entomology at The Ohio State University, collected pollen samples from three areas located in Indiana for a period of 16 weeks. The samples gathered from the beehives were found to have come from about 30 plant families and contain pesticide residues that belong to nine chemical classes.
While the team was not really surprised by the discovery of some chemicals in the pollens like neonicotinoids, which is usually used as seed treatments for some crops like corn and soybean, they did not expect that the highest concentration of pesticides found in the pollen samples were pyrethroids.
Pyrethroids are usually used for insecticides to repel mosquitoes, ticks, fleas and other unwanted household guests. Both the neonicotinoids and pyrethroids are harmful to bees.
Also, as per UPI, some studies have also suggested that insecticides are one of the main factors that contributes to the decline in the numbers of honeybees. Another active ingredient found in most insect repellents used at home, called DEET, is also present in the pollen samples from the Indiana beehives.
The number of pesticides found in the pollen samples could pose a greater risk for the honeybees as toxicity levels may increase with the combination of these chemicals. "If you care about bees as a homeowner, only use insecticides when you really need to because bees will come into contact with them," Long said.
