Neonicotinoid insecticides severely affect honey bee queens

Williams, Geoffrey Rhys; Troxler, Aline; Retschnig, Gina; Roth, Kaspar Samuel; Yanez Amayo, Victor Orlando; Shutler, Dave; Neumann, Peter; Gauthier, Laurent (2015). Neonicotinoid insecticides severely affect honey bee queens. Scientific Reports, 5, p. 14621. Nature Publishing Group 10.1038/srep14621

Preview

Text Williams et al_Queens_srep14621.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY). Download (642kB) | Preview

Queen health is crucial to colony survival of social bees. Recently, queen failure has been proposed to be a major driver of managed honey bee colony losses, yet few data exist concerning effects of environmental stressors on queens. Here we demonstrate for the first time that exposure to field realistic concentrations of neonicotinoid pesticides during development can severely affect queens of western honey bees (Apis mellifera). In pesticide-exposed queens, reproductive anatomy (ovaries) and physiology (spermathecal-stored sperm quality and quantity), rather than flight behaviour, were compromised and likely corresponded to reduced queen success (alive and producing worker offspring). This study highlights the detriments of neonicotinoids to queens of environmentally and economically important social bees, and further strengthens the need for stringent risk assessments
to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem services that are vulnerable to these substances.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

303 since deposited on 10 May 2016
21 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item