Pesticide In High Fructose Corn Syrup Is Killing Bees

It’s no news that honeybees have been in decline recently because of a mysterious condition known as “colony collapse disorder.” While the exact cause is unknown, researchers believe pesticides have contributed to this decline. One group of crop pesticides, called neonicotinoids, has received particular attention from beekeepers and researchers.

In a study at the University of California San Diego, biologists have found a specific neonicotinoid known as imidacloprid, which has been banned for use in certain crops in some European countries, may be at least partly to blame. This pesticide is often present in the high fructose corn syrup that beekeepers feed their bees.

The biologists found in their experiments that honeybees treated with a small, single dose of imidacloprid, comparable to what they would receive in nectar from a plant treated with the pesticide, become picky eaters.

“In other words, the bees preferred to only feed on sweeter nectar and refused nectars of lower sweetness that they would normally feed on and that would have provided important sustenance for the colony,” says researcher Daren Eiri. “In addition, bees typically recruit their nest mates to good food with waggle dances, and we discovered that the treated bees also danced less.”

The two researchers point out that honeybees that prefer only very sweet foods can dramatically reduce the amount of resources brought back to the colony. Further reductions in their food stores can occur when bees no longer communicate to their kin the location of the food source.

“Exposure to amounts of pesticide formerly considered safe may negatively affect the health of honey bee colonies,” says biologist James Nieh.