Performance of honey bee (Apis mellifera) queens reared in beeswax cells impregnated with coumaphos

In-Hive Miticides and their Effect on Queen Supersedure and Colony Growth in the Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)

“…queen body weight [32,33,35], low queen ovary weight [32], low queenrearing success [33], as well as high queen mortality [32]. This evidence demonstrates that fluvalinate and coumaphos use have potentially damaging effects to honey bee health, particularly individual drones and queens.…”

“…Prior work exposing adult bees to fluvalinate did not affect worker longevity within a few days after exposure, but it caused high worker mortality at least 24 days after the bees' original exposure to the miticide [29]. Furthermore, several studies have reported a decrease in several aspects of queen quality after exposure to miticides during development [22,[32][33][34]39,40]. In a recent study conducted by Rangel and Tarpy (in review), honey bee queens that were raised in miticideladen beeswax cups showed significantly lower sperm counts, lower sperm viability, and higher mating frequency, compared to queens reared in miticide-free beeswax cups.…”

“…One study of commercial queen rearing operations found higher accumulations of fluvalinate and coumaphos in queen cells compared to the surrounding beeswax, which suggests that queen larvae are differentially exposed to those chemicals during development [32]. The aforementioned studies have looked at the effects of either fluvalinate [29,32] or coumaphos [32][33][34][35] on honey bee reproductive health. But to date, no studies have looked at the combined effects of both miticides on the health of honey bee queens and the colonies they head, which is a critical consideration knowing that both compounds are ubiquitous within managed beehives in the US [27] and have been shown to exhibit negative synergetic effects on individual bees [31,43].…”

“…Even though therapeutic concentrations of fluvalinate and coumaphos have been reported to have low toxicity to bees [28,29]-likely because of the bees' rapid ability for detoxification by cytochrome P450 monooxygenases [30,31]-several studies have linked the use of these miticides with a decrease in honey bee colony health (see above). Likewise, the increased use of these miticides to control Varroa mites has coincided with an increase in problems relating to poor queen quality [22,[32][33][34][35]. In fact, beekeepers continue to report issues with lower queen lifespan due to rapid supersedure-when the workers in a honey bee colony replace their mother queen with a new sister queen-as well as the inability of colonies to naturally raise new queens in a timely fashion [36][37][38].…”

A scientific note on seasonal levels of pesticide residues in honey bee worker tissues

“…Wu et al (2011) demonstrated that bees reared in brood comb containing high levels of pesticide residues exhibit increased brood mortality and shorter adult longevity. Furthermore, Collins et al (2004) and Pettis et al (2004) demonstrated that wax impregnated with known quantities of coumaphos or fluvalinate can adversely impact queen health. Pesticide residues in honey bee brood comb are ubiquitous throughout many commercial beekeeping operations (Mullin et al 2010;Wu et al 2011).…”