{"id":2250,"date":"2014-07-09T16:43:13","date_gmt":"2014-07-09T21:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=2250"},"modified":"2014-07-09T16:45:27","modified_gmt":"2014-07-09T21:45:27","slug":"exposure-to-pesticides-impairs-bees-foraging-ability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/exposure-to-pesticides-impairs-bees-foraging-ability\/","title":{"rendered":"Exposure to pesticides impairs bees\u2019 foraging ability<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2231\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Bumblebee.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2231\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2231\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Bumblebee.jpg\" alt=\"A bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) worker foraging on a Dahlia flower. A new analysis suggests that neonicotinoids have an impact on the choice of flowers bees forage from, as well as their foraging efficiency. (Photo credit: Richard Gill)\" width=\"400\" height=\"347\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Bumblebee.jpg 400w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Bumblebee-300x260.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2231\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) worker foraging on a Dahlia flower. A new analysis suggests that neonicotinoids have an impact on the choice of flowers bees forage from, as well as their foraging efficiency. (Photo credit: Richard Gill)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A new analysis confirms that exposure to pesticides &#8211; including one in the neonicotinoid (neonic) class &#8211; has a negative impact on bees\u2019 foraging ability. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The study used radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to track 259 bees from 40 colonies over 4 weeks. Bees exposed to the neonic pesticide either by itself or mixed with another pesticide brought home less pollen as they got older, whereas untreated bees brought home more pollen as they got older, reflecting increased foraging experience.\u00a0<\/span>Neonic exposed workers also collected pollen from different flower sources than untreated bees.<\/p>\n<p>These findings suggest that neonics at field-relevant concentrations influence the flower choices made by bees and interfere with bees\u2019 ability to learn and remember how to extract pollen from flowers.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/1365-2435.12292\/abstract\" target=\"_blank\">Original research paper<\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in the journal\u00a0<em><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Functional Ecology<\/span>\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>July 8, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<h4 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Nigel Raine, University of Guelph,\u00a0Ontario<\/span><\/h4>\n<h4 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Richard Gill, Imperial College London, United Kingdom<\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new analysis confirms that exposure to pesticides &#8211; including one in the neonicotinoid (neonic) class &#8211; has a negative impact on bees\u2019 foraging ability. The study used radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to track 259 bees from 40 colonies over 4 weeks. Bees exposed to the neonic pesticide either by itself or mixed with another [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2231,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[170,1445,171,40,50,1847],"class_list":["post-2250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-biodiversity","tag-conservation","tag-ecology","tag-insects","tag-ontario","tag-pesticides"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Bumblebee.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-Ai","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2250"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2266,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250\/revisions\/2266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}