Sammanfattning

Honey bees Apis mellifera forage in a wide radius around their colony, bringing back contaminated food resources that can function as terrestrial bioindicators of environmental pesticide exposure. Evaluating pesticide exposure risk to pollinators is an ongoing problem. Here we apply five metrics for pesticide exposure risk (prevalence, diversity, concentration, significant pesticide prevalence, and hazard quotient (HQ)) to a nation-wide field study of honey bees, Apis mellifera in the United States. We examined samples from 1055 apiaries over seven years for 218 different pesticide residues and metabolites, determining that bees were exposed to 120 different pesticide products with a mean of 2.78 per sample. Pesticides in pollen were highly prevalent and variable across states. While pesticide diversity increased over time, most detections occurred at levels predicted to be of low risk to colonies. Varroacides contributed most to concentration, followed by fungicides, while insecticides contributed most to di-versity above a toxicity threshold. High risk samples contained one of 12 different insecticides or var-roacides. Exposures predicted to be low-risk were nevertheless associated with colony morbidity, and low-level fungicide exposures were tied to queen loss, Nosema infection, and brood diseases.(c) 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Nyckelord

Apis mellifera; Pollen; Pesticides; Exposure risk; Colony morbidity

Publicerad i

Environmental Pollution
2021, Volym: 279, artikelnummer: 116566
Utgivare: ELSEVIER SCI LTD

SLU författare

• Forsgren, Eva

  • Institutionen för ekologi, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

UKÄ forskningsämne

Miljövetenskap


Publikationens identifierare

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2021.116566

Permanent länk till denna sida (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/112089