Roundup Weed Killer Could Be Linked To Widespread Bee Deaths, Study Finds (npr.org)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: A new study [published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences] by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin posit that glyphosate -- the active ingredient in the herbicide -- destroys specialized gut bacteria in bees, leaving them more susceptible to infection and death from harmful bacteria. Researchers Nancy Moran, Erick Motta and Kasie Raymann suggest their findings are evidence that glyphosate might be contributing to colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon that has been wreaking havoc on honey bees and native bees for more than a decade. They hope their results will convince farmers, landscapers and homeowners to stop spraying glyphosate-based herbicides on flowering plants that are likely to be pollinated by bees.

"No large-scale study has ever found a link between glyphosate and honey bee health issues," Bayer said in a statement, adding that the new study "does not change that." Bayer noted the study relied on a small sample of individual bees and that it does not meet regulatory research criteria on pesticides stipulated by international guidelines developed by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and other international organizations. Additionally, the company suggested it is "questionable whether the concentrations of the substance tested could at all be absorbed by bee populations in the open over a relevant period of time." According to the report in the journal, the researchers focused on honey bees and used "hundreds of adult worker bees from a single hive" and treated them with varying levels of glyphosate. Editor's note: In June, Germany's pharmaceutical giant Bayer purchased Monsanto, the company that developed Roundup.

Comments

Re:It's in everything.

[lgw]

I didn't have any problems finding weedkiller without it - glyphosate kills grass, so there's a whole line of "safe for your yard" products without it.

Re:It's not targeting bees. It's potentially worse

[Rei]

Except it's not. It was a conclusion based on a group of 15 bees, which gave bees unusually large doses of glyphosphate, and found that the heaviest dose of glyphosphate had no statistically significant effects, unlike the mild dose. The data actually argues that we should give bees more glyphosphate in order to neutralize any effects.

treated with either 5 mg/L glyphosate (G-5), 10 mg/L glyphosate (G-10) or sterile sucrose syrup (control) for 5 d .... The total number of gut bacteria decreased for both treatment groups, relative to control, but this drop was significant only for the G-5 group, which also exhibited more severe compositional shifts

They try to explain this away by arguing that maybe they were having some bias in capturing G-10 bees, well, because "bees exposed to glyphosate may exhibit impaired spatial processing"... without giving any evidence for or even a mechanism through which this could happen. What they wrote is literally the equivalent of writing re. humans "If you take some antibiotics that kill only a fraction of your gut bacteria, you're going to wander off in confusion and die". The whole study also contradicts the authors' previous work, which blamed CCD on antibiotics given by beekeepers.

The whole premise is kind of silly to begin with. Glyphosphate kills flowering plants. Bees adjust where they forage based on where flowers can be found. Bees are not going to have any interest whatsoever hanging around a field that's been sprayed with glyphosphate. Glyphosphate also does not stay on the surface; it's highly soluble and washes into the soil, where it binds tightly with soil particles.

But of course, the study said something negative about glyphosphate, so of course everyone covered it, in as apocalyptic terms as possible.