The dose makes the poison: have “field realistic” rates of exposure of bees to neonicotinoid insecticides been overestimated in laboratory studies?

By N. Carreck, Francis L. W. Ratnieks. 2014

130 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary Recent laboratory based studies have demonstrated adverse sub-lethal effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on honey bees and bumble bees, and these studies have been influential in leading to a European Union moratorium on the use of three neonicotinoids, clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam on “bee attractive” crops. Yet so far, these same effects have not been observed in field studies. Here we review the three key dosage factors (concentration, duration and choice) relevant to field conditions, and conclude that these have probably been over estimated in many laboratory based studies.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics, Insect Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ba5e1c12b0a4d79a6e8d7f0b3f583965997b7712

Citations in the corpus

• Planting of neonicotinoid‐treated maize poses risks for honey bees and other non‐target organisms over a wide area without consistent crop yield benefit (2017, unknown): “…lethal exposures of honey bees during planting of treated annual crops have been documented in the past, our study is the first to use empirical data to document and describe exposure risk of non-target organisms to neonicotinoid seed treatments across the landscape (Carreck & Ratnieks 2014).”