A report published in The Guardian revealed, “The world’s most widely used insecticide is an inadvertent contraceptive for bees, cutting live sperm in males by nearly 40%, according to research”. ‘More thorough environmental risk assessments’In the first study to investigate the effects of neonicotinoids on drones, an worldwide research team led by the University of Bern and Agroscope has found that two neonicotinoids may inadvertently reduce drone lifespan and number of living sperm.
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Swiss researchers from the University of Bern revealed a new fact: the common insecticides are risky for the sperm of bees.
Termed neonicotinoids, these pesticides don’t actually kill the drones. It acted as a contraceptive and sperm retardant on the male drone bees.
But insecticide-treated pollen is a food for drones, that is a very risky factor. But bees that ate treated pollen produced 39 percent less live sperm than those that didn’t, according to a controlled experiment by Swiss researchers published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Researchers found a clear difference.
Queens keep colonies functioning at full capacity, but they can’t do their job if they’re not regularly inseminated with healthy sperm from several males.
“There’s a reduction in sperm viability and the amount of living sperm, but that doesn’t mean there’s no living sperm at hand”, said the lead author of the study Lars Straub. “It is possible that agricultural chemicals may also play an important role”, says senior author Geoff Williams of the University of Bern and Agroscope. The failure of the queen bees was thus linked with the sperm count deficiency in male drone bees. However, U.S. Department of Agriculture bee scientist Jeff Pettis, who was not part of the neonicotinoid study, suggested that poor sperm health may account for about a third of the growing crisis.
Male honeybees, called drones, serve one purpose-to mate with a queen.
As the Associated Press pointed out, the worrisome population decline of pollinators can come down to a combination of many culprits, such as mites, parasites, disease, pesticides and poor nutrition.
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Neonicotinoid-maker Bayer Crop Science spokesman Jeffrey Donald told the AP that the company will review the study, but in general “artificial exposure to pesticides under lab conditions is not reflective of real-world experience”.
