Glyphosate and Acetamiprid Offer Low Toxicity to Bees

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service and Mississippi State University tested 42 commonly used pesticides and found that many of them, including glyphosate and acetamiprid, had no negative impact on bees.

According to the report in the Entomology Today, the testing was carried out in a way that was “more realistic field setting on cotton row crops” than have been preformed in previous studies. They essentially mimicked a situation where an adult bee in a cotton field accidentally gets sprayed. In addition, researchers used pesticides the commercial formulations that would be used by farmers in their fields. “This is an important distinction because most previous research tested the active ingredients only, which did not include other chemicals that influence the distribution, absorption, and overall exposure of the pesticides to plants and bees,” the report said.

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According to Entomology Today, “The pesticides tested included 40 insecticides and miticides, one herbicide (glyphosate, better known by its trade name “Roundup”), and one fungicide (tetraconazole). What made this study more realistic was not only the field spray application of each pesticide, but also the interpretation of data. The researchers determined the lethal concentration and lethal dose of each pesticide (to determine chemical toxicity), and then matched those numbers with the amounts of pesticide actually used in agriculture. In this way, they could rank pesticides by individual chemical toxicity as well as by how much they are used in the field. Chemicals that were not used as much ranked lower despite toxicity, while chemicals that were used more tended to rank higher.”

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