Hacker Remix

Bumblebee queens choose to hibernate in pesticide-contaminated soil

78 points by andai 3 days ago | 33 comments

PepperdineG 3 days ago

It could be something like what happens with honey bees in chimneys. Honey bees think they've found a great hollow tree home with it even smelling like a tree due to creosote, but creosote levels are so high that it makes sick bee colonies. With bumblebees it might be something where bees are naturally attracted to smell thinking it's a good thing without being able to recognize there can be too much of a good thing, so will make them sick.

kbelder 3 days ago

Like humans and sugar.

beretguy 2 days ago

Or like humans and beer.

water-data-dude 2 days ago

Or humans and people who agree with them.

geoduck14 2 days ago

Or humans and HN

lambaro 2 days ago

Or humans and scratchy lotteries

rezistik 2 days ago

Or humans and putting too much money on the ponies

more_corn 3 days ago

Bees are plagued by mites and parasites. It could be that pesticides lead to fewer attackers for the bumblebees.

metalman 3 days ago

many larger animals self medicate and apply external anti pest substances I watch my horse roll and rub herself on bayberry shrubs,of which there are many in her 10 acre paddock,the bay berry is very aromatic and the seeds are so wax covered asnto be a useable source of candle wax. The paddock is also full of many many kinds of bees wasps and hornets,which I watch closely to see what they eat and where they shelter,with the idea to learn.how to create ideal habitat in areas with struggling bee populations,got a few pointers from watching,but the tid bit above is trurly facinating

lm28469 2 days ago

> many larger animals self medicate and apply external anti pest substances

It seems like some birds use cigarettes butts to prevent parasites so it wouldn't be a first

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cigarette-butts-h...

ChrisMarshallNY 3 days ago

I understand that's why cats like catnip.

esperent 3 days ago

I'm pretty sure they like catnip because it gets them high.

ChrisMarshallNY 2 days ago

It does, but I read an article that said it’s a natural insect repellent, and that it was important (especially for big cats, who also like it) that cats not be plagued by insects, while hunting, so the conjecture was that their desire to roll in it was an evolutionary advantage.

Kinda like enjoying sex, means we do it more often.

creativenolo 3 days ago

The would be the evolution cause and effect

esperent 2 days ago

It's easy to make claims when it comes to evolutionary biology - there's patterns everywhere - but it's almost impossible to prove anything, and most of the things that are "obvious" won't turn out to be true.

As a counterpoint, there's loads of things that get humans high that don't have any obvious benefit, why shouldn't other animals be the same?

And there's certainly loads of other plants that work just as well as pesticides, and yet they don't get cats high.

LorenPechtel 3 days ago

That was my first thought on reading the title.

Before we consider this a problem we should be looking at the survival rate in contaminated vs uncontaminated soil. I wouldn't be at all surprised of the queens are making the right choice.

vinnymac 3 days ago

Makes me wonder if it could be that some of the pesticides attract the bumblebees, but not because of the absence of parasites.

Presumably clean soil also has no mites or parasites in it.

andai 3 days ago

In one place I lived, there was some residue on the windows from stickers the previous tenants children had put on the windows.

There was a wasp nest on the roof and the wasps kept going for the part of the window where the stickers had been. Must have been something in there that attracted them.

jvanderbot 3 days ago

I don't think that's a safe assumption considering how many mites live on skin, or how many ticks live in pristine wilderness.

vinnymac 3 days ago

They actually mention this as an alternative explanation other than missing fungi and parasites after rereading the article:

> Another possibility is that the queens could have developed an "acquired taste" for pesticides, as researchers put it, due to prior exposure in their environment.

metalman 3 days ago

the key might be that durring the torpor of hibernation the bees are less vulnerable to toxins than there parasites first question is do the parasites also hibernate or do they continue to feed on the bees,while the bees have crawled into a chemical spill and put themselves into suspended animation for 3-4 months and keep in mind that many insect species feed on toxic plants to deter preditors, monarch butterflys and milk weed is top of the list

pfdietz 3 days ago

Those error bars are pretty wide, so I wouldn't read too much into this.

gus_massa 2 days ago

I agree. From the research paper:

> Soil treatment (n = 6; χ2 = 11.13, p = 0.049), but not contamination level (χ2 = 1.67, p = 0.196) nor the interaction between both variables (χ2 = 6.04, p = 0.302) had a significant effect on the proportion of queens found in soil crates.

It's easier to see the graphical representation: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972... . The error bars has too much overlap, and all of them overlap with the mean and the bars of the control group.

justinclift 3 days ago

Sounds like it'd be an effective way to develop genetic tolerance for these pesticides after several generations of this behaviour.

With "several" probably doing some heavy lifting there. ;)