Pollinator Peril: How Common Agricultural Cocktails Harm Honeybees

Pollinators, including honey bees, wild bees, butterflies and many other insects, are some of the most important creatures on our planet. By pollinating plants, both wild and cultivated, they have an essential role in maintaining wider ecosystems and ensuring our food security. However, we have come to take them for granted, and don’t fully appreciate their function in ensuring our ongoing survival. Insects are declining at a truly alarming rate. Among other factors human activities such as industrial farming and corresponding insecticide and fungicide use over large areas of land to protect food crops against pests and disease are considered to be major contributors. Many different pesticides have also been detected in honeybee colonies. Scientists are attempting to uncover the specific factors involved in insect decline, before it’s too late. Recent research by Sarah Manzer and colleagues in the research groups of Prof. Ricarda Scheiner and Prof. Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter at the Julius Maximilians Universität Würzburg in Germany has shed new light on a potential culprit: a combination of insecticides and fungicides commonly used in agriculture.