HoneyBee_Neonicotinoids_Weaver_Dan_Navasota_Texas_26September2025_Reel4219.mp3

Dan Weaver [00:00:01] Unfortunately, the newer generations of agrichemicals, while they are substantially safer for mammals than earlier compounds that were widely applied, these neonicotinoid pesticides that are so prevalent today, have very alarming impacts on honeybees, even at sublethal doses.

Dan Weaver [00:00:32] They can interfere with neural function in the honeybees so that bees can get a small dose of neonicotinoid pesticides and they lose their ability to navigate.

Dan Weaver [00:00:45] It may impact their ability to communicate accurate information to their nest mates.

Dan Weaver [00:00:51] As you know, honey bees dance in order to tell their sisters when they dance on the comb in the dark. Other sisters can decode that dance language and use the trajectory of the dance across the face of the comb, and then compare that, or translate that, into an angle with respect to the incident polarized light from the Sun when they're outside the hive and fly to the nectar source with some, some accuracy.

Dan Weaver [00:01:22] But, all that's very sensitive to the ability of those dancing scouts to be able to get back to the colony, to begin with, and then dance accurately to transmit that information. And it looks like neonicotinoid pesticides interfere with that.

Dan Weaver [00:01:40] It looks like it may have some impact on their ability to contend with other threats, makes them perhaps more susceptible to the insults of fungicides or pesticides.

Dan Weaver [00:01:54] And fungicides and pesticides and herbicides can all interact synergistically to cause a whole host of effects that you would never observe with any of those single compounds alone.

Dan Weaver [00:02:09] And that's increasingly something that is encountered by honeybees in the environment as these compounds are now used ubiquitously. And, you know, they're just a feature of the environment in much of the U.S. now.