New "Superfood" for Bees May be Able to Help Detoxify Hives Contaminated with Pesticides
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:
New 'superfood' for bees may be able to help detoxify hives contaminated with pesticides:
TORONTO -- To bee or not to bee? Researchers have synthesized a particle as small as pollen, which, when fed to bees, may be able to help them to detoxify hives damaged by pesticides in order to protect the insects.
"This is a low-cost, scalable solution which we hope will be a first step to address the insecticide toxicity issue and contribute to the protection of managed pollinators," Minglin Ma, an associate professor at Cornell University and senior author of the research, said in a press release.
[...] The wax and pollen in around 98 per cent of commercial bee hives in the U.S. have been contaminated by various pesticides, according to the release, and pesticides cause beekeepers to lose around a third of their hives annually.
[...] "We have a solution whereby beekeepers can feed their bees our microparticle products in pollen patties or in a sugar syrup, and it allows them to detoxify the hive of any pesticides that they might find," James Webb said in the release. Webb is a co-author of the paper and CEO of Beemmunity, a new company hoping to use this technology to assist commercial beekeepers.
The new microparticles are formulated to battle specific pesticides known as organophosphate-based insecticides, which make up a third of the market, according to the release.
Journal Reference:
Jing Chen, James Webb, Kaavian Shariati, et al. Pollen-inspired enzymatic microparticles to reduce organophosphate toxicity in managed pollinators, Nature Food (DOI: 10.1038/s43016-021-00282-0)
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