Environment & Energy

unhappycamper

(60,364 posts) Tue Mar 15, 2016, 06:24 AM Mar 2016

Even Low Pesticide Exposure Makes It Harder For Bees To Learn And Remember

http://www.hngn.com/articles/188488/20160314/even-low-pesticide-exposure-makes-harder-bees-learn-remember.htm

Bumblebees exposed to low levels of neonicotinoid insecticide collected more pollen but they took significantly longer than unexposed bees to do so. Researchers said that this is because pesticides are altering the way bees learn and remember.

Even Low Pesticide Exposure Makes It Harder For Bees To Learn And Remember
By Christine Hsu | Mar 14, 2016 04:11 PM EDT

Even low exposure to pesticides can seriously disrupt foraging behavior in bees. New research reveals that exposure to pesticides significantly alters flower choices, learning abilities and ability to extract nectar and pollen in bumblebees.

While bumblebees exposed to a realistic level of neonicotinoid insecticide collected more pollen, lead researcher Dara Stanley, of Royal Holloway University of London, found that they took significantly longer than unexposed bees to do so.

"We found that chronic exposure to field-realistic levels of thiamethoxam altered the interactions between bumblebees and morphologically complex wildflowers. First, a higher proportion of bees that were released from pesticide-treated colonies became foragers in comparison to control colonies. Of these foragers, bees exposed to pesticide visited more L. corniculatus flowers, showed a trend towards a preference for this species on their first flower visit and collected more pollen," researchers wrote in the study.

"However, although bees exposed to pesticide learnt to manipulate flowers sooner, control bees learnt to manipulate flowers after fewer flower visits than pesticide-exposed bees, and also visited a higher proportion of T. repens flowers," they added.