Queen bees have a disturbing way to survive pesticides
Honeybee queens have been observed offloading accumulated pesticides into their eggs to protect their own health. This maternal offloading process could lead to a slow accumulation of toxins in the colony, potentially contributing to colony collapse.
Why it matters
Understanding this mechanism is critical for beekeepers and environmental scientists working to prevent the decline of honeybee populations.
Worker bees normally serve as a colony's first line of defense against contamination, filtering harmful substances before they can spread through the hive. But new research shows that queen bees also have a defense of their own.
When honeybee queens are exposed to pesticides over time, some of those chemicals can accumulate in their bodies and then be transferred into their eggs. Researchers call this process maternal offloading.
The findings, published in Current Biology , provide the first evidence in honeybees of how far a queen may go to reduce her own chemical burden. The research was led by the University of California, Davis.
"In order to protect herself, the queen bee offloads these chemicals into her eggs to get rid of them," said Sascha Nicklisch, the paper's senior author and an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Toxicology. "No one has shown this in honeybees before."
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