Bees Addicted to Nicotine, Study Reveals

[nicnik]

I didn't even look at the motherjones thing, I won't read her stuff. I'm not a fan.




Oh no, my comment wasn't directed at you it was directed at these people coming up with these dumb assumptions from the studies. The bees preferring the solution with nicotine over the other solution is obviously a preference but to call it an addiction like they do is annoying and just more of the same when it comes to reporting on nicotine.

Oh, I know it wasn't me you were criticizing. But I insist on taking some of the blame. I purposely picked the most sensational headline I found.

 

[AndriaD]

Apparently there's been a lot of misreporting about the research, including linking it to the colony collapse/falling honeybee populations problem (it's the honeybees we're so dependent on). Still a serious problem - who wants to be killing bumblebees?

CORRECTION: Caffeine Does Not Protect Bumble Bees – Entomology Today

"It is also important to point out that this research was conducted on bumble bees — not honey bees — and therefore has nothing at all to do with honey bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), as some media outlets have reported."

Well here's what I'd like to know? what exactly is a "bumble" bee? I thought all bees except carpenter bees made honey.... carpenter bees just make HOLES.

Andria

 

[DC2]

I wouldn't mind hearing from bluecanary on this. She's been a beekeeper for awhile.

Here is a reply from BlueCanary to a recent post that I made in another thread...

Pesticide MISUSE is harmful to bees. (As in, commercial agriculture applying pesticides during the day when bees are flying instead of at night like they are supposed to.) And neonics are one of the few pesticides that actually get inside the plant in such a way that they are present in the pollen of the plants it is used on, which is taken back to the hive and builds up inside it and weakens it. Which leaves the bees more vulnerable to parasites and infections that kill them.

A lot of the neonics/colony collapse panic is just the same as formaldehyde and vaping. It's the news, selling ads. tobacco smoke is like bee xanax, for some reason, but it's probably not nicotine related.

 

[Nermal]

Thanks for tracking that down, DC

 

[3mg Meniere]

Any smoke is like bee xanax.

Beekeepers use smoke to trick them into loading themselves with honey, ready to flee the hive. They are very peaceable in such a situation, just the moment to steal honey from them.

 

[BlueCanary]

I hadn't heard anything about this, so this was interesting to read! AndriaD, a "bumble bee" and a "carpenter bee" are essentially the same thing. And if they don't stop trying to bore holes in the new section of roof that I just had to spend too much money having replaced, no amount of anything is going to protect them from my tennis racket.

Like most scientific studies that are used to make headlines, I feel like this one is probably 9/10ths sensationalized. Preference does not indicate addiction, sure enough. And we don't know enough about how the nervous system of a bee works to know whether they are even capable of becoming addicted to something. I do know that it is a fact that neonicitinoid pesticide is carried back to the hive in pollen, and builds up in the comb and causes long term neurological problems with the bees. (Part of the "colony collapse" phenomenon may be neonic buildup causing the homing sense of the bee to malfunction, causing the bee not to be able to find her way home.) The pesticide itself is disruptive to the nervous system of insects, that is how it works. It is more effective on some insects than others.

It is possible for an animal to become "addicted" to a poison. Azaleas are poisonous to dogs, but some dogs can become addicted to the feeling that they get when they chew the leaves, which can cause them to ingest a toxic dose. I don't know that I believe that bees are "addicted" to neonics. Of course, I'm not an entomologist either. I know that the pollen of azaleas is disruptive to the nervous system of bees and can kill them, and that they know this somehow and avoid the flowers. My yard is full of azaleas and beehives, and the bees (and my dogs thankfully) avoid the stupid things like the plague.