Nicholson C., Knapp J., Kiljanek T., Albrecht M., Chauzat M., Costa C., De la Rua P., Klein A., Mänd M., Potts S., Schweiger O., Bottero I., Cini E., de Miranda J., Di Prisco G., Dominik C., Hodge S., Kaunath V., Knauer A., Laurent M., Martinez-Lopez V., Medrzycki P., Pereira-Peixoto M., Raimets R., Schwarz J., Senapathi D., Tamburini G., Brown M., Stout J., Rundlöf M.
Pesticide use negatively affects bumble bees across European landscapes.
Sustainable agriculture requires balancing crop yields with the effects of pesticides
on non-target organisms, such as bees and other crop pollinators. Field studies
demonstrated that agricultural use of neonicotinoid insecticides can negatively affect
wild bee species1,2, leading to restrictions on these compounds3. However, besides
neonicotinoids, field-based evidence of the effects of landscape pesticide exposure
on wild bees is lacking. Bees encounter many pesticides in agricultural landscapes4–9
and the effects of this landscape exposure on colony growth and development of any
bee species remains unknown. Here we show that the many pesticides found in bumble
bee-collected pollen are associated with reduced colony performance during crop
bloom, especially in simplified landscapes with intensive agricultural practices. Our
results from 316 Bombus terrestris colonies at 106 agricultural sites across eight
European countries confirm that the regulatory system fails to sufficiently prevent
pesticide-related impacts on non-target organisms, even for a eusocial pollinator
species in which colony size may buffer against such impacts10,11. These findings
support the need for postapproval monitoring of both pesticide exposure and effects
to confirm that the regulatory process is sufficiently protective in limiting the collateral
environmental damage of agricultural pesticide use.