Good Nutrition Enhances Honey Bee Resilience

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that good nutrition enhances honey bee resilience against viral threats and exposure to pesticides. Their study, published in Science of the Total Environment, examined how the interplay of three factors— nutritional stress, viral infections and exposure to pesticides— together influence honey bee survival. Specifically, the team looked at pollen collected by honey bees visiting small patches of restored prairie bordering agricultural fields in Iowa. Bees that had a natural pollen diet still experienced losses from an introduced virus, but suffered fewer additional losses from pesticide exposure. “The takeaway from this study is that bees are quite resilient even to the interaction of pesticides and viruses if they have really good nutrition,” professor Adam Dolezal said. However, the researchers caution that this doesn’t mean that chemical exposures don’t matter, as exposure to some pesticides is deadly to bees even in small doses.