Graduate Student to Discuss Examining Risks to Honey Bee Pollinators Foraging in Agri Landscapes

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Jon Zawislak is a graduate student in Neelendra Joshi's lab in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology.

The Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology is hosting seminar speaker Jon Zawislak, a graduate student in Neelendra Joshi's lab, today. The seminar is titled, "Examining Risks to Honey Bee Pollinators Foraging in Agricultural Landscapes."

The seminar takes place from 8:30-9:30 a.m. today, Thursday, Nov. 18, via the Zoom link:

• Meeting link: https://bit.ly/3HyCC6A
• Meeting ID: 892 8604 5578
• Passcode: email enpl@uark.edu

The seminar is open to everyone.

Zawislak describes the research: "Bee pollinators provide essential ecological services to wild plant communities, and add tremendous economic value to agriculture by improving both the quality and quantity of crop yield. Beekeepers are often contracted by growers to provide colonies of honey bees for pollination of high-value produce (fruits, vegetables and nuts). Many of the major commodity crops produced in the central and midsouthern United States are wind-pollinated (rice, corn, grain sorghum, wheat), or are sufficiently self-fertile (soybeans, cotton), and so do not require bee pollination in order to produce yield. Beekeepers still rely on these agricultural landscapes to support honey bee colonies when not actively pollinating crops because irrigated landscapes remain in bloom while other areas may endure a long seasonal nectar dearth. Intensely managed lands can expose bees to a variety of risks, including reduced nutrition and increased pesticide exposure. Neonicotinoid insecticides have been blamed for recent widespread losses of honey bee colonies in the U.S. and abroad. The planting of insecticide-coated seeds to protect plants from early season insect damage has come under particular scrutiny as a factor in bee declines.

Previous investigations have yielded inconsistent results, based on varying methods, seasons and environments, and the scale of experiments. This research characterized the landscape where seed treatments were common, in terms of floral resources available to bees, and sources of contamination. A 3.2 km radius around an apiary was surveyed for two seasons to quantify the land use by crop, and the proportion planted with treated seeds, other products applied during the season, and determine which of these compounds were found in bee hives. Our survey found that approximately 81 percent of the landscape under cultivation, of which 70 percent was planted with neonicotinoid treated seeds. However, no neonicotinoids were detected in samples of hive products. Because pollen could be sampled directly from foraging bees at discrete intervals, and traced back to plant origin, it was collected for a season and used as a bioindicator to determine when neonicotinoids were present in crop or wild plant pollen. Bees collected relatively little pollen from crops except for a brief period of seasonal dearth. Neonicotinoids were detected infrequently and only at low levels, and not at all when bees were visiting crops. To test the effects of neonicotinoid ingestion on individual bees in situ, RFID microships were used to continuously monitor the activities of individual honey bees fed with a sublethal concentration of imidacloprid. Bees that consumed 20 ppb did not suffer acute mortality, but actually survived 1.7 times as long as untreated bees. Altogether this work suggests that neonicotinoids, when properly utilized, may not necessarily pose a greater risk to honey bees than other agricultural chemicals, provided colonies have access to sufficient alternative nutritional sources in the surrounding landscape."

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