Cornell University says its researchers found that honeybees, used to pollinate orchard and fruit crops, “encounter danger due to lingering and wandering pesticides, according to an analysis of the bee’s own food,” called beebread and made form pollen. In the study, based on 120 colonies placed near 30 apple orchards in New York State, the beebread in 17 percent of the colonies showed the presence of acutely high levels of pesticide exposure after several days of foraging by the bees while apple trees were in flower.
The study also found chronic exposure to pesticides in 73 percent of the colonies. “Our data suggest pesticides are migrating through time and space,” said assistant entomology professor Scott McArt, the lead author of the study. The honeybees may have gathered pollen from wildflowers, weeds and plants along the fencerows, as well as the apple trees.
More than 60 percent of the pesticides found in the beebread were not sprayed during the apple bloom season, according to the study. McArt said persistent pesticides may have been sprayed on crops near the orchards, and pesticides used in the orchard before the arrival of the bees may have accumulated in weeds and grasses. “We found risk was attributed to many different types of pesticides. Neonicotinoids were not the whole story but they were part of the story,” said McArt.