The ongoing debate about glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH) and their implications for beneficial arthropods gives rise to controversy. This research was carried out to cover possible sublethal GBH effects on the brood and colony development, adult survival, and overwintering success of honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) under field conditions. Residues in bee relevant matrices, such as nectar, pollen, and plants, were additionally measured. To address these questions, we adopted four independent study approaches. For brood effects and survival, we orally exposed mini-hives housed in the “Kieler mating-nuc” system to sublethal concentrations of 4.8 mg glyphosate/kg (T1, low) and 137.6 mg glyphosate/kg (T2, high) over a period of one brood cycle (21 days). Brood development and colony conditions were assessed after a modified OECD method (No. 75). For adult survival, we weighed and labeled freshly emerged workers from control and exposed colonies and introduced them into non-contaminated mini-hives to monitor their life span for 25 consecutive days. The results from these experiments showed a trivial effect of GBH on colony conditions and the survival of individual workers, even though the hatching weight was reduced in T2. The brood termination rate (BTR) in the T2 treatment, however, was more than doubled (49.84%) when compared to the control (22.11%) or T1 (20.69%). This was surprising as T2 colonies gained similar weight and similar numbers of bees per colony compared to the control, indicating an equal performance. Obviously, the brood development in T2 was not “terminated” as expected by the OECD method terminology, but rather “slowed down” for an unknown period of time. In light of these findings, we suggest that chronic high GBH exposure is capable of significantly delaying worker brood development, while no further detrimental effects seem to appear at the colony level. Against this background, we discuss additional results and possible consequences of GBH for honey bee health.

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The ongoing debate about glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH) and their implications for beneficial arthropods give rise to controversy. This research was carried out to cover possible sublethal GBH effects on brood and colony development, adult survival, and overwintering success of honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) under field conditions. Residues in bee relevant matrices such as nectar, pollen and plants were measured in addition. To address these questions, we adopted four independent study approaches. For brood effects and survival, we orally exposed mini-hives housed in the "Kieler mating-nuc" system to sublethal concentrations of 4.8 mg glyphosate/kg (T1, low) and 137.6 mg glyphosate/kg (T2, high) over the period of one brood cycle (21 days). Brood development and colony conditions were assessed after a modified OECD method (No. 75). For adult survival, we weighed and labeled freshly emerged workers from exposed colonies and introduced them into non-contaminated mini-hives to monitor life span for 25 consecutive days. Results from these experiments showed a trivial effect of GBH on colony conditions and survival of individual workers, even though hatching weight was reduced in T2. The brood termination rate (BTR) in the T2 treatment, however, was more than doubled (49.84%) when compared to the control (22.11%) or T1 (20.69%). This was surprising as T2 colonies gained similar weight and similar numbers of bees per colony compared to the control, indicating equal performance. Obviously, the brood development in T2 was not "terminated" as expected by the OECD method terminology but rather "slowed down" for an unknown period of time. In light of these findings, we suggest that chronic high GBH exposure is capable of delaying worker brood development to a significant extent while no further detrimental effects seem to appear at the colony level. Against this background, we discuss additional results and possible consequences of GBH for honey bee health.

We present neonicotinoid concentrations in guttation drops of commonly used maize (Zea mays) cultivars, germinated from seeds coated with active substances (a.s.): i) imidacloprid (IMD), ii) clothianidin (CTN) and iii) thiamethoxam (THM) over two growing seasons. In one variant clothianidin was applied as seed granule. The trial took place at the experimental fields of the Julius Kühn-Institut in Berlin in 2010 and 2011. Data from 2010 are related to a presentation of “Pesticides in guttation droplets following seed treatment – field studies” (Schenke et al., 2011) [1] presented at the SETAC North America conference and only some figures were used in the “Scientific opinion on the science behind the development of a risk assessement of plant protection products on bees (Apis mellifera, Bombus spp. and solitary bees)” (EFSA, 2012) [2]. Only parts of the data from 2011 was presented in relation to the “Exposure of Coccinellidae to guttation droplets on maize seedlings with seed or granule treatment of neonicotinoids” (Schenke and Heimbach, 2014) [3].The article describes the study sites, the variants of treated maize seeds, sample collection and the analytical methods used to quantify the neonicotinoids and relevant metabolites of IMD (5-OH-IMD and IMD-olefine) and of THM (CTN) in guttation drop samples. The complete field data set is publicly available at the OpenAgrar repository under https://doi.org/10.5073/20180907-142020 (Schenke et al., 2018) [4].