Low nutrient diets resulting from intensive agriculture make bees more vulnerable to neonicotinoids

Intensive agriculture is known to decrease the quality of nutrients, in the form of sugars, available in the nectar and pollen that bees eat. Now scientists have found that when bees eat a low sugar diet, they are 50 per cent more likely to die as a result of neonicotinoid exposure. "These findings should cause us to rethink our current pesticide risk assessment procedures, which, based upon our findings, may underestimate the toxic effects of pesticides on bees," said Dr Simone Tosi, a University of California San Diego researcher who co-authored the study. "Our results provide the first demonstration that these stressors can synergistically interact and cause significant harm to animal survival." Crucially, the combination of the low nutrition diet and exposure to pesticides was more than the sum of its parts when it came to impacting bee survival. Their results were published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1869/20171711

Source: The Independent, 20 Dec 2017
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/pesticides-bees-harm-more-thou…