Insecticides ( 杀 虫 剂) containing flupyradifurone and sulfoxaflor, chemicals considered harmless to bees and bumblebees when approved, can have damaging effects on the health of honeybees. The chemicals are more likely to make bees suffer from diseases and shorten their lifespan. This was proven in a scientific study that was published in Science of the Total Environment. It was conducted at Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg(MLU) and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ).
For the study, honey bees that were free from environmental influences were first bred(培育) in the lab. "We wanted to control every respect of the bees' lives," says Dr. Yahya Al Naggar, the biologist who led the project at MLU and who now works at Tanta University in Egypt. All bees were given the same food at first. They were then divided into several groups and different insecticides were added to their food. One group was given flupyradifurone, while another was given sulfoxaflor. Both chemicals are approved insecticides in Germany, although their use is now limited to greenhouses.
Over a period of ten days, the team observed whether the insecticide s had any effect on the bees and, if so, what. They found that the insecticides were anything but harmless: Around half of all the bees whose diet included flupyradifurone died during the study. While sulfoxaflor produced similar effects, more bees survived the diet.
As the study was conducted in a lab to avoid external influences, it is unclear whether the same results can be found in nature. "The bees might be able to fully or at least partly make up for the negative effects ——or the effects of the insecticides could well be even greater," concludes Dr Tesfaye Wubet from UFZ. With this in mind, the team calls for the potential effects of new insecticide son beneficial insects to be researched better before the insecticides are approved.
