Research Wednesday found that bee mortality is significantly increased by exposure to a combination of pesticides.The pollinators, bees and other insects are vital for wild habitats as well as crops. There is evidence that there has been a sharp decline in the number of these insects worldwide. This raises concerns about the impact on food security and natural ecosystems.A meta-analysis of many published studies from the past 20 years examined the impact of agrochemicals and parasites on bee behavior - including memory, foraging, and colony reproduction – and how they interact with health.Researchers discovered that bees were more likely to die if they are exposed to stressors than when they are protected from them.Nature published a study that found pesticide interactions were likely to be synergistic, meaning they had a greater combined effect than their individual effects.These interactions between multiple agrochemicals significantly raise bee mortality," stated Harry Siviter (University of Texas at Austin).This study concluded that risk assessments which fail to account for this outcome "may underestimate bee mortality's interactive effect on anthropogenic stressors".Researchers stated that their findings "demonstrate the fact that the current regulatory process does not protect bees against the undesirable consequences of complex chemical exposure."The study concluded that "failing to address this problem and continuing to expose bees in agriculture to multiple anthropogenic stressesors will lead to the continued decline of bees and their services as pollinators, to the detriment to human and ecosystem health."Adam Vanbergen, France's National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, stated that intensive agriculture poses a threat to pollinating insects. This includes pesticides like fungicides, and a decrease in pollen and nectar coming from wildflowers.Industrial-scale honey bee management also increases pollinator disease and parasite exposure.Although individual studies have examined how these stressors interact, the meta-analysis "confirms" that the bees' exposure to a variety of chemicals in an intensively farmed environment can pose a threat to their populations.He stated that there has been a lot of attention paid to honey bees but said there was more research needed on other pollinators who might react differently.According to the UN, pollinators are responsible for 75 percent of all the world's crops that produce fruits and seeds for human consumption.Scientists concluded in 2019 that almost half of all insects worldwide were in decline, and another third could disappear entirely by the end of the century.One out of six species have been declared extinct in a region around the globe.Habitat loss and pesticide usage are the main causes of pollinator extinction.Agence France-Presse
