Abstract
Recently, the causes of honeybee colony losses have been intensely studied, showing that there are multiple stressors implicated in colony declines, one stressor being the exposure to pesticides. Measuring exposure of individual bees within a hive to pesticide is at least as difficult as assessing the potential exposure of foraging bees to pesticide. We present a model to explore how heterogeneity of pesticide distribution on a comb in the hive can be driven by worker behaviors. The model contains simplified behaviors to capture the extremes of possible heterogeneity of pesticide location/deposition within the hive to compare with exposure levels estimated by averaging values across the comb. When adults feed on nectar containing the average concentration of all pesticide brought into the hive on that particular day, it is likely representative of the worst-case exposure scenario. However, for larvae, clustering of pesticide in the comb can lead to higher exposure levels than taking an average concentration in some circumstances. The potential for extrapolating the model to risk assessment is discussed.
Highlights
Pesticides, insecticides, have the potential to impact the honeybee colony if exposure is high enough.[1]
All scenarios lead to Gini coefficients >0.75 implying that most of the pesticide is contained in a small number of cells (Figure S1)
The results show that, in most cases, assuming each larva or adult feeds on the daily average pesticide concentration led to higher median doses received by both the larvae and the adult bees (Figure 1, Tables S2−S5), effects of different behaviors were seen on the distribution of those doses among individuals (Figure 1), and on the likelihood and rate at which larvae or adults reach theoretical threshold doses (Figure 2)
Summary
Pesticides, insecticides, have the potential to impact the honeybee colony if exposure is high enough.[1]. After day 19, scenarios in which receivers clustered nectar had a higher proportion of larvae receiving the 1 ng dose than scenarios with random storage or averaged pesticide concentrations in the food, with the addition of multiple transfer further increasing the proportion (Figure 2A).
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