Roundup causes high levels of mortality following contact exposure in bumble bees.
Abstract
Pollinators underpin global food production, but they are suffering significant declines across the world. Pesticides are thought to be important drivers of these declines. Herbicides are the most widely applied type of pesticides and are broadly considered 'bee safe' by regulatory bodies who explicitly allow their application directly onto foraging bees. We aimed to test the mortality effects of spraying the world's most popular herbicide brand (Roundup®) directly onto bumble bees Bombus terrestris audax. We used three Roundup® products, the consumer products Roundup® Ready-To-Use and Roundup® No Glyphosate, the agricultural product Roundup® ProActive, as well as another herbicide with the same active ingredient (glyphosate), Weedol®. Label recommended pesticide concentrations were applied to the bees using a Roundup® Ready-To-Use spray bottle. Bees exhibited 94% mortality with Roundup® Ready-To-Use® and 30% mortality with Roundup® ProActive®, over 24 hr. Weedol® did not cause significant mortality, demonstrating that the active ingredient, glyphosate, is not the cause of the mortality. The 96% mortality caused by Roundup® No Glyphosate supports this conclusion. Dose-dependent mortality caused by Roundup® Ready-To-Use, further confirms its acute toxicity. Roundup® products caused comprehensive matting of bee body hair, suggesting that surfactants, or other co-formulants in the Roundup® products, may cause death by incapacitating the gas exchange system. These mortality results demonstrate that Roundup® products pose a significant hazard to bees, in both agricultural and urban systems, and that exposure of bees to them should be limited. Synthesis and applications. Surfactants, or other co-formulants, in herbicides and other pesticides may contribute to global bee declines. We recommend that, as a precautionary measure until co-formulant identities are made public, label guidelines for all pesticides be altered to explicitly prohibit application to plants when bees are likely to be foraging on them. As current regulatory topical exposure toxicity testing inadequately assesses toxicity of herbicide products, we call for pesticide companies to release the full list of ingredients for each pesticide formulation, as lack of access to this information hampers research to determine safe exposure levels for beneficial insects in agro-ecosystems.