Abstract
The Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) plays a crucial role in pollinating natural ecosystems and crops. They support global food production, maintenance of biodiversity, and generation of income from hive by-products. In modern agriculture, frequent use of chemicals, such as herbicides, exposes bees directly to their toxicity. Whereas the noxious effects of commonly used herbicides on honeybees have become an emerging concern worldwide, their toxicity on the African subspecies Apis mellifera scutellata Lepeletier is unknown. In this study, we exposed A. m. scutellata to field concentrations of both paraquat and glyphosate and determined their effects on bee food consumption and survival rates. We found that the mortality rates of bees upon herbicide ingestion were concentration dependent. Lethal doses of paraquat and glyphosate were 10.8 and 229.5 µg/bee, respectively. Our findings suggest that the African honeybee is susceptible to paraquat and tolerant to glyphosate than its European counterpart. This study provides a baseline to help in regulating herbicide use and/or establishing their safe concentrations to protect biodiversity, particularly the beneficial pollinator insects such as bees.
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Acknowledgements
This work received financial support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) commissioned and administered through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) Fund for International Agricultural Research (FIA), grant number 17.7860.4–001; the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, the Section for Research, Innovation, and Higher Education, grant number RAF-3058 KEN-18/0005; the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida); the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC); the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia; and the Government of the Republic of Kenya. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the donors. We thank James N. Kimani and Joseph W. Kilonzo for their support during honeybee hive handling and sample collection, and the bee gut microbiota icipe team members for their continuous support.
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Conceptualization: Zamira Wesonga, Joel Bargul, Juan Paredes, Michael Lattorff, Thomas Dubois.
Project Administration: Thomas Dubois.
Formal Analysis: Zamira Wesonga.
Investigation: Zamira Wesonga.
Methodology: Zamira Wesonga, Joel Bargul, Juan Paredes, Michael Lattorff.
Supervision: Joel Bargul, Juan Paredes, Michael Lattorff, Thomas Dubois.
Writing – original draft: Zamira Wesonga.
Writing – reviewing and editing: Joel Bargul, Michael Lattorff, Juan Paredes, Thomas Dubois.
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Wesonga, Z.M., Bargul, J.L., Paredes, J.C. et al. Impact of acute oral exposure to paraquat and glyphosate on food consumption and survival rates of the African honeybee Apis mellifera scutellata Lepeletier (Hymenoptera: Apidae). Int J Trop Insect Sci 43, 1513–1521 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42690-023-01064-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42690-023-01064-w