Bee Pesticides Essay

Pesticides appear to play a great role in cases of colony collapse. For example, neonicotinoids appear to impact bee behavior in ways that easily provide the opportunity for illnesses and parasites to strike when a bee already has a poor diet and a hampered immune system. A neonicotinoid is a newer form of pesticide which is produced in the form of pellets and put into the soil. When watered, the crops absorb the chemicals from these pellets through their roots. This makes them pest-resistant and lasts for several years afterward, so the neonicotinoids influence crops and plants to which they weren’t even directly applied.
CCD’s signature symptom is a significantly higher percentage of bee losses within a hive soon after symptoms first appear. Worker bees vanish, leaving bees of different roles to replace them in foraging and pollinating. Until the colony has fully collapsed, the queen and young offspring still survive despite the population loss. Once it collapses, the queen and any remaining bees …show more content…
This occurs when the colony eats the food collected from crops treated with these pesticides. In an experiment investigating the effects of pesticides on bee colonies, authors Richard Gill, Oscar Ramos-Rodriguez, and Nigel Raine explain that within their experiment, colonies exposed to neonicotinoids sent more worker bees to forage for food than colonies not exposed to any type of pesticide. Pesticide colonies also suffered from decreased worker efficiency despite a greater amount of time and energy focused on foraging. Gill, Ramos-Rodriguez, and Raine concluded that neonicotinoids most likely impair the internal navigation systems of bees, which causes them to forage less efficiently and to even potentially get lost on their way back to the hive, contributing to high colony abandonment rates.