Agrochemicals Threaten Bees, New Study Finds

This undated handout photo released by Heather Mattila, PLOS ONE, shows Apis cerana, a species of bee on a hive in Vietnam. (AFP)
This undated handout photo released by Heather Mattila, PLOS ONE, shows Apis cerana, a species of bee on a hive in Vietnam. (AFP)
TT

Agrochemicals Threaten Bees, New Study Finds

This undated handout photo released by Heather Mattila, PLOS ONE, shows Apis cerana, a species of bee on a hive in Vietnam. (AFP)
This undated handout photo released by Heather Mattila, PLOS ONE, shows Apis cerana, a species of bee on a hive in Vietnam. (AFP)

Exposure to a cocktail of agrochemicals significantly increases bee mortality, but regulators may be underestimating the dangers of pesticides in combination.

Bees pollinate 71 types of plants that provide 90 percent of the world's food, according to the United Nations. The steep drops in insect populations worldwide in the recent years have prompted fears of dire consequences for food security and natural ecosystems.

A research reviewed dozens of published studies over the last 20 years that looked at the interaction between agrochemicals, parasites and malnutrition on bee behaviors -- such as foraging, memory, colony reproduction -- and health. It found that pesticide interaction with other chemicals was likely to be synergistic, meaning that their combined impact was greater than the sum of their individual effects.

These "interactions between multiple agrochemicals significantly increase bee mortality," said co-author Harry Siviter, of the University of Texas at Austin.

"Regulators should consider the interactions between agrochemicals and other environmental stressors before approving their usage," he told AFP.

"The results demonstrate that the regulatory process in its current form does not protect bees from the unwanted consequences of complex agrochemical exposure," he added.

"A failure to address this will result in the continued decline in bees and their pollination services, to the detriment of human and ecosystem health," the researchers concluded.

In a commentary also published in Nature, Adam Vanbergen of France's National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment said that pollinating insects face threats from intensive agriculture, including chemicals like fungicides and pesticides, as well as a reduction of pollen and nectar from wild flowers.

"This study confirms that the cocktail of agrochemicals that bees encounter in an intensively farmed environment can create a risk to bee populations," Vanbergen wrote.

He said there had been a general focus on impacts on honey bees, but added there is a need for more research on other pollinators, which might react differently to these stressors.



China's New Crew Arrives at Space Station in Sign of Growing Influence in Space Field

A Long March rocket with a Shenzhou-19 spacecraft atop takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwestern China in the early hours of Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A Long March rocket with a Shenzhou-19 spacecraft atop takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwestern China in the early hours of Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
TT

China's New Crew Arrives at Space Station in Sign of Growing Influence in Space Field

A Long March rocket with a Shenzhou-19 spacecraft atop takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwestern China in the early hours of Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A Long March rocket with a Shenzhou-19 spacecraft atop takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwestern China in the early hours of Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A Chinese space ship carrying a three-person crew docked with its orbiting space station Tuesday as the country seeks to expand its exploration of outer space in competition with the United States, even as it looks for cooperation from other nations.
The team of two men and one woman will replace the astronauts who have lived on the Tiangong space station for the last six months, conducting a variety of experiments and maintaining the structure, The Associated Press reported.
They are expected to stay until April or May of next year. The new mission commander, Cai Xuzhe, went to space in the Shenzhou-14 mission in 2022, while theother two, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, are first-time space travelers. Song and Wang were born in the 1990s and are graduates of the third wave of Chinese astronaut recruitment, having undergone a rigorous testing and training process taking years.
Early Wednesday morning, China declared the launch and entry into outerspace a “complete success.”
The Shenzhou-19 spaceship carrying the trio blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 4:27 a.m. local time atop a Long March-2F rocket, the backbone of China’s crewed space missions.
“The crew condition is good and the launch has been successful,” the state broadcaster China Central Television announced.
China built its own space station after being excluded from the International Space Station, mainly because of US concerns over the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese Communist Party’s military arm’s overall control over the space program. China’s moon program is part of a growing rivalry with the US and others, including Japan and India.
The new team will replace the astronauts who have lived on the Tiangong space station for the last six months and will overlap with them for a couple of days or more. They are expected to stay until April or May of next year.
The new mission commander, Cai Xuzhe, went to space in the Shenzhou-14 mission in 2022, while the other two, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, are first-time space travelers, born in the 1990s.
Song was an air force pilot and Wang an engineer with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. Wang will be the crew’s payload specialist and the third Chinese woman aboard a crewed mission.
Besides putting a space station into orbit, the Chinese space agency has landed an explorer on Mars. It aims to put a person on the moon before 2030, which would make China the second nation after the United States to do so. It also plans to build a research station on the moon and has already transferred rock and soil samples from the moon in a first for any nation in decades, and placed a rover on the little-explored far side of the moon in a global first.
The US still leads in space exploration and plans to land astronauts on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, though NASA pushed the target date back to 2026 earlier this year.
The new Chinese crew will perform spacewalks and install new equipment to protect the station from space debris, some of which was created by China.
According to NASA, large pieces of debris have been created by “satellite explosions and collisions.” China’s firing of a rocket to destroy a redundant weather satellite in 2007 and the “accidental collision of American and Russian communications satellites in 2009 greatly increased the amount of large debris in orbit,” it said.
China’s space authorities say they have measures in place in case their astronauts have to return to Earth earlier.
China launched its first crewed mission in 2003, becoming only the third nation to do so after the former Soviet Union and the United States. The space program is a source of enormous national pride and a hallmark of China’s technological advances over the past two decades.