Honeybees Collect Pollen From Non-Crop Plants Contaminated With Pesticides

Researchers from Purdue University have discovered that honeybees collect their pollen from non-crop plants. The said pollen is infected with agricultural and urban pesticides during the growing season.

Newsweek reports that the study was printed in Nature Communication on May 30, 2016. It was led by Elizabeth Long, post-doctoral researcher and Christian Krupke, professor of entomology at Purdue University.

The researchers gathered pollen from Indiana honeybee hives at three locations for more than 16 weeks. They want to know which pollen sources the honeybees collected during the season and if this pollen is contaminated with pesticides, according to Science Daily.

The pollen samples come from 30 plant families. The outcome showed that the researchers have found 29 pesticides in pollen from the treated cornfield, 29 pesticides in pollen from the meadow site and 31 pesticides in pollen from the untreated cornfield.

 Krupke said that the pesticides they found in the pollen with greatest quantities were the pyrethroids, which are synthetic products that are used in a household to repel insects. The pollen gathered from corn and soybean pollen contained neonicotinoids, which are toxic to bees. Other pesticides include phenothrin, which is used to deter ticks and fleas and prallethrin for terminating hornets and wasps.

Krupke said that although crop pollen was only a slight part of what they gathered, the bees in their study were exposed to a wide range of chemicals than they expected. He further explained that the sheer numbers of pesticides they found in pollen samples were surprising. He added that agricultural chemicals are only part of the problem. The homeowners and urban landscapes are big donors, even though the hives are precisely adjacent to crop fields.

Long said that the findings really illustrate how honeybees are regularly exposed to several pesticides during the season. This makes the pesticides an important long-term stress factor for bees. She further said that if you care about bees as a homeowner, only use insecticides when you really need to. This is because bees will come into contact with them.