Meeting Abstract
The decline of the honeybee population has been receiving media attention recently. Perhaps a contributing factor in colony collapse disorder (CCD), honeybees are also bombarded with many other stresses such as pesticides and miticides. In order to study the potential effect of miticides on honeybees, 160 forager honeybees (Apis mellifera anatoliaca) were tested for motor control in response to doses of oxalic acid. Using a LD50 of 548.95 μg/bee, the different doses tested were 1/5, 1/10, 1/50, 1/100, 1/500, 1/1000 of the LD50. Subscores were blindly given before and after treatment for four different parts of the bee: proboscis, legs, wings, and abdomen. The aggregate scores were then analyzed. A null hypothesis of no significant changes in motor scores and an alternative hypothesis of any change in motor scores were tested. Even at high doses, oxalic acid did not have any effects on the motor control of bees, and thus it can be concluded that the commonly used miticide is not dangerous to forager bees, failing to reject the null hypothesis (p = 0.572). These results corroborate finding of the previous REU researchers, which show that pesticides vary in their toxicity to honey bees. Similar to acetamiprid in these prior studies, oxalic acid did not significantly affect motor control of honey bees. Oxalic acid is a miticide that we tested in a single factor experiment as acute doses. Since other general insecticides may accumulate in the hive and oxalic acid is applied for much longer periods than in our study, more research is needed on the effects of chronic and combined pesticide exposure on honeybee behavior.
