Are botanical biopesticides safe for bees?

Are botanical biopesticides safe for bees?

An Italian-Brazilian team – Roberto Catania, Maria Augusta Pereira Lima, Michele Potrich, Fabio Sgolastra, Lucia Zappalà and Gaetana Mazzeo (including a character who stood out in the guide document scam of theEFSA on bees) – carried out a bibliographical review on a subject that smacks of activist science.

Here is the summary of Are Botanical Biopesticides Safe for Bees (Hymenoptera, Apoidea)? » (lAre botanical biopesticides safe for bees (Hymenoptera, Apoidea)?), published in Insects :

« simple summary

Synthetic pesticides are among the main threat factors for wild and honeybees. In recent decades, botanical biopesticides have received increasing interest and are increasingly used in agriculture due to their high selectivity and short persistence in the environment. However, to date, little has been discovered or studied regarding the harmful effects of these substances on bees. This article reviews published studies on the lethal and sublethal effects of botanical biopesticides on social and solitary bees. Although botanicals are considered safer than chemical pesticides, some of them can cause lethal and several sublethal effects on bees. We suggest that further research is needed on this subject, in particular to improve knowledge on certain groups of bees such as solitary bees.

Résumé

The recent global decline in insect populations is of particular concern for pollinators. Wild and honey bees (Hymenoptera, Apoidea) are of paramount environmental and economic importance due to their role in pollinating cultivated and wild plants, and synthetic pesticides are among the main factors contributing to their decline. Botanical biopesticides may be a viable alternative to synthetic pesticides in plant defense due to their high selectivity and short persistence in the environment. In recent years, scientific advances have been made to improve the development and effectiveness of these products. However, knowledge about their harmful effects on the environment and non-target species is still scarce, especially when compared to synthetic products. We summarize here the studies concerning the toxicity of botanical biopesticides on the different groups of social and solitary bees. We highlight the lethal and sublethal effects of these products on bees, the lack of a uniform protocol for assessing the risks of biopesticides on pollinators, and the paucity of studies on specific groups of bees, such as the large and diverse group solitary bees. The results show that botanical biopesticides have lethal effects and a large number of sublethal effects on bees. However, the toxicity is limited when comparing the effects of these compounds to those of synthetic compounds. »

It seems difficult to do worse in the display of negative prejudices with regard to synthetic products and, conversely, positive prejudices with regard to substances of natural origin!

For example, we must dare to argue that a ” high selectivity seconds in an article that implies a lack of selectivity, at least for certain substances, vis-à-vis bees.

But this article has the advantage of presenting in a summarized manner, with references, a state of knowledge on the effects of substances of natural origin – which, moreover, can be extracted by chemical processes – on part of the entomofauna.

It is a pity that it does not present points of comparison with synthetic insecticides.

We are rather far from the binary world of nasty synthetic pesticides and nice natural pesticides. We already knew that.