The world’s most used weedkiller damages the beneficial bacteria in the guts of honeybees and makes them more prone to deadly infections, new research has found.
Previous studies have shown that pesticides such as neonicotinoids cause harm to bees, whose pollination is vital to about three-quarters of all food crops. Glyphosate, manufactured by Monsanto, targets an enzyme only found in plants and bacteria.
However, the new study shows that glyphosate damages the microbiota that honeybees need to grow and to fight off pathogens. The findings show glyphosate, the most used agricultural chemical ever, may be contributing to the global decline in bees, along with the loss of habitat.
“We demonstrated that the abundances of dominant gut microbiota species are decreased in bees exposed to glyphosate at concentrations documented in the environment,” said Erick Motta and colleagues from University of Texas at Austin in their new paper. They found that young worker bees exposed to glyphosate exposure died more often when later exposed to a common bacterium.
Other research, from China and published in July, showed that honeybee larvae grew more slowly and died more often when exposed to glyphosate.
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11 comments:
No surprise there. So, what's the government going to do about it?
First they discover they kill the bees, then they discover they kill us.
1:14 PM nothing. like the nothing they have been doing about it. how long were we poisoned with ddt until something was done.
It's killing people as well. Roundup is used to bring wheat to harvest faster.
Do you wonder why probiotics are popular as supplements?
How about the explosion of gluten intolerance?
I never heard about this as a kid, or the amount of type 2 diabetes out there?
I will admit, I use this stuff sparingly on my patio and driveway. I think if you use it for what it is intended, it's a great product.
I think it is a bad idea to use this product in agriculture. Not enough research was done before this product was introduced.
The sad thing is, there is absolutely no way to avoid this stuff in our food. Anything made with flour or even soy based products like vegetable oil are no longer safe to consume. There are many roundup ready crops out there.
I just sold my Monsanto stock!
If it does it to honey bees, it probably does it to a lot of organisms, including us.
Glyphosate is the asbestos of today.
This cannot be true. I heard global warming was harming the honey bees.
I guess the left wing activists have found another boogyman
Chemicals, Big, Big Business!
Big Gov. isn't going to do anything.
Think about it and what it must be
doing to our bodies.
Monsanto will instantly come up with fifty studies that refute this one, with probably a few that saying that Roundup is actually good for bees. We've seen this kind of trickery before with companies that produce things that kill us.
"More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette."
It kills. It has a much longer half life than the makers suggest. During a recent test, every 2017 California wine made contained quantities of glyphosate. It is in everything. And it’s poison.
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