WHAT?! New Study Reveals Bees Are Getting Hooked On the Pesticides Responsible for Their Decline

In recent years, bee populations around the world have been declining at alarming rates, leading scientists to investigate what could be causing the decimation of these vital insects. Among other causes, one of the major culprits has been found to be a group of highly toxic pesticides known as neonicotinoids.

As several research studies have revealed, when bees come into contact with these chemicals, it has some seriously negative impacts on the tiny winged creatures. For instance, a 2012 study published in the journal Science found that when bumblebees encounter neonicotinoids, their growth rate decreases greatly, as does the production of new queens in their colonies.

Not to mention pesticide exposure results in the bees pollinating less, which spells very bad news for our global food supply considering the crucial insects help to pollinate 30 percent of the world’s food crops and 90 percent of wild plants.

Given the damaging effects of these highly controversial pesticides, the European Union has instated a near-total ban on neonicotinoids. But even so, the insect-killing chemicals remain among the most widely used in the world.

Scientists have been warning us for years that all nations need to completely abandon the use of neonicotinoids as soon as possible if we hope to save the bees. And now, a recent study has shown that these pesticides are even more detrimental to our helpful pollinators than previously thought.

To learn more about how neonicotinoid pesticides affect bees, a team of researchers from Imperial College London and Queen Mary University of London supplied bumblebees in ten colonies with two different sources of food over the course of ten days. The first was a simple sugar solution, and the second contained neonicotinoids.

What they found was alarming to say the least: As time went on, the flying insects began to show a clear preference for the food that had been injected with pesticides, and they were able to seek it out even when the food sources were switched around. In fact, the bees started to display behavior that researchers described as being indicative of dependence on the substance that was eerily reminiscent of nicotine dependence in humans.

In the words of study leader Dr. Richard Gill, “Our findings that bumblebees acquire a taste for neonicotinoids ticks certain symptoms of addictive behavior, which is intriguing given the addictive properties of nicotine on humans, although more research is needed to determine this in bees.”

While scientists don’t yet fully understand how and why bees are getting hooked on pesticides, the implications of this latest research are most certainly not good. No matter how you look at it, bees getting addicted to chemicals which have been linked to their demise is a major cause for concern, not only for the insects themselves but also for us.

So what can be done to help keep bee populations healthy so that they can continue to do the essential work of pollinating our food, you ask? There are so many easy yet highly effective steps you can take! For instance, opting to buy organic produce that is grown without nasty pesticides is a simple way to help bring an end to the use of these chemicals, thus greatly benefiting the bees.

For more ideas, check out these articles:

• 5 Ways We Can Help Save Bees and Monarchs
• Bees Need You to Plant These 4 Flowers in Your Backyard NOW!
• 5 Easy Ways to Help the Bees

And don’t forget to share this article with everyone in your network! We need everyone on board to help reverse the plight of the bee, nature’s most vital pollinator!

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