Department of Entomology, Virginia Tech, 216 Price Hall, 170 Drillfield Drive, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA.
Pasadena Office Natural Resources Department, SWCA Environmental Consultants, 51 W Dayton St, Pasadena, CA 91105, USA.
J Insect Sci. 2022 Jan 1;22(1). doi: 10.1093/jisesa/ieab095.
Honey bees (Linnaeus, Hymenoptera: Apidae) are widely used as commercial pollinators and commonly forage in agricultural and urban landscapes containing neonicotinoid-treated plants. Previous research has demonstrated that honey bees display adverse behavioral and cognitive effects after treatment with sublethal doses of neonicotinoids. In laboratory studies, honey bees simultaneously increase their proportional intake of neonicotinoid-treated solutions and decrease their total solution consumption to some concentrations of certain neonicotinoids. These findings suggest that neonicotinoids might elicit a suboptimal response in honey bees, in which they forage preferentially on foods containing pesticides, effectively increasing their exposure, while also decreasing their total food intake; however, behavioral responses in semifield and field conditions are less understood. Here we conducted a feeder experiment with freely flying bees to determine the effects of a sublethal, field-realistic concentration of imidacloprid (IMD) on the foraging and recruitment behaviors of honey bees visiting either a control feeder containing a sucrose solution or a treatment feeder containing the same sucrose solution with IMD. We report that IMD-treated honey bees foraged less frequently (-28%) and persistently (-66%) than control foragers. Recruitment behaviors (dance frequency and dance propensity) also decreased with IMD, but nonsignificantly. Our results suggest that neonicotinoids inhibit honey bee foraging, which could potentially decrease food intake and adversely affect colony health.
意大利蜜蜂（Linnaeus，膜翅目：蜜蜂科）被广泛用作商业传粉媒介，通常在含有新烟碱类处理植物的农业和城市景观中觅食。先前的研究表明，蜜蜂在接触亚致死剂量的新烟碱类后会表现出不良的行为和认知效应。在实验室研究中，蜜蜂同时增加了对新烟碱类处理溶液的比例摄入，并降低了对某些新烟碱类浓度的总溶液消耗。这些发现表明，新烟碱类可能会引起蜜蜂的次优反应，它们优先在含有农药的食物上觅食，有效地增加了它们的暴露，同时也减少了它们的总食物摄入；然而，半野外和野外条件下的行为反应则不太清楚。在这里，我们进行了一项带有自由飞行蜜蜂的喂食实验，以确定亚致死、田间实际浓度的吡虫啉（IMD）对访问含有蔗糖溶液的对照喂食器或含有相同蔗糖溶液和 IMD 的处理喂食器的蜜蜂的觅食和招募行为的影响。我们报告说，与对照觅食者相比，经 IMD 处理的蜜蜂觅食频率降低了 28%，持续时间降低了 66%。招募行为（舞蹈频率和舞蹈倾向）也随 IMD 而减少，但无显著差异。我们的结果表明，新烟碱类抑制了蜜蜂的觅食，这可能会减少食物摄入并对蜂群健康产生不利影响。
