ABOVE: A bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) foraging outdoors and wearing a unique tracking tag
JAMES CRALL
Bumblebees exposed to the insecticide imidacloprid tend to contribute less to the welfare of their colony than untreated bees, according to a report in Science today (November 8). Inside their nests, bees chronically eating this common pesticide were less active, didn’t care for larvae as much or pitch in on maintaining the nest, and had fewer social interactions, the researchers found.
“It’s very fascinating and gives us a much greater understanding of the mechanism behind the patterns that we’ve seen of reduced [bee] colony growth and reproduction,” says biologist Maj Rundlöf of Lund University in Sweden who was not involved in the research.
Imidacloprid is one of a class of neonicotinoid neurotoxic insecticides that were developed during the 1980s and 1990s and are now “absolutely pervasive globally,” says biologist James Crall, a postdoc in the lab ...
