Scientists have developed a “vaccine” for bees against pesticides — and it appears to be working, according to an initial study.
According to the findingspublished in Nature Sustainability, hydrogel microparticles fed to bumblebees in sugar water caused a 30% higher survival rate in bumblebees exposed to lethal doses of neonicotinoids, and significantly reduced symptoms in bumblebees exposed to lower doses that would not normally would not be fatal, but could cause damage. .
Neonicotinoids damage bees’ nervous systems, paralyzing and eventually killing them. They are used to control a variety of pests, especially sap-feeding insects such as aphids and root-feeding larvae.
Scientists from Cornell University, in New York, tried to find a way to protect bees from the commonly used pesticides. Neonicotinoids were only completely banned in the EU last year – a previous ban allowed their emergency use. The UK has allowed their use every year since 2021, but the Labor government has said it will stop. The pesticides are still used in many US states.
The researchers found that the microparticles physically bind to the neonicotinoids and once absorbed, the pesticides and microparticles pass through the bee’s digestive tract and are excreted, without causing the same damage. The antidote has the potential to be selectively applied to other pesticides.
This treatment improved the bees’ motivation to forage and led to a 44% increase in the number of bees able to walk a route mapped by scientists. Bye become so ill that they cannot flap their wings when exposed to neonicotinoids, but using a high-speed camera, the researchers found that impaired wing beat frequency after exposure improved significantly with the treatment.
“Bees are crucial to crop pollination and agriculture and food security, so it’s important that people take bee health seriously,” said lead author Julia Caserto.
She added that it could help mitigate the effects of pesticides, which are still widely used. “We want to try to overcome this exposure to pesticides in managed bees so that we can still have enough crop pollination so that we can all be sustainable,” she said.
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Next, scientists hope to test the treatment on honeybees, which are smaller and therefore may have different responses to pesticides and the microparticles.
