Glyphosate perturbs the gut microbiota of honey bees

I find it disheartening that it takes studies of this nature to reshape regulations. Glyphosate (as Roundup) has been the bestselling herbicide on the market since 1980. Among bee-keepers, asserting that &quot;roundup kills bees&quot; is about as controversial as &quot;rain makes things wet.&quot;<p>The US regulatory environment treats artificially prepared chemicals as innocent until proven guilty. A safer approach (recently adopted in Europe) would be to guarantee the safety of industrial, agricultural, and household chemicals before they are allowed to go to market.<p>On a potentially related note, sperm counts in the western world have been declining precipitously since 1990. I&#x27;d bet that glyphosate and&#x2F;or other common poorly regulated chemicals have something to do with this.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;sperm-count-dropping-in-western-world&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;sperm-count-dropp...</a>

A critical comment:<p>Look at Figure 1B. The variation in the gut microbes is large at the start of the study (day 0). Feeding the bees 5 mg&#x2F;liter glyphosate, they have a statistically significant difference from the control (no glyphosate) in 5 microbes out of 8. But feeding 10 mg&#x2F;liter, they get no statistically significant differences from the control.<p>They have no explanation for why glyphosate seems to have an effect at 5 mg&#x2F;litre concentration but not at the higher 10 mg&#x2F;litre concentration (&quot;The relative lack of effects of the G-10 treatment on the microbiota composition at day 3 posttreatment is unexplained&quot;). They do give speculations, though.

I don’t <i>care</i> what glyphosate does or doesn’t do. Monsanto has a pile of research showing it as mostly harmless. Maybe that’s like Big Tobacco. Time will tell.<p>What I do care about is what Roundup does. There are many many curious compounds in Roundup, and some of them appear to be much nastier than glyphosate. If for instance all of these stomach problems people have been having lately are caused by application of Roundup to aid in grain harvesting, we need to know sooner rather than later. And it doesn’t really matter as much to me which chemical is the culprit. It’s the same bad actors regardless.

Figure 1 looks weird. At day 0 the ranges for the bacterias in the evaluated groups (C, G-5, G-10) differ a lot - Is this noise? Why? If i interpret this graphic right the study did find bacteria changes at lower levels of glyphosate(G-5), but not at higher levels of glyphosate expose (G-10). I am no bee expert but I doubt that bees normally eat sugar syrup all day - which also will contribute to the weird stuff happening in the C-group in comparision from day 0 to 3.

Worse, Roundup (what&#x27;s actually being sprayed) is likely causing even more damage than what these glyphosate (just one &quot;active&quot; ingredient) studies are suggesting since other studies demonstrate a significant difference in effect of the cocktail vs just the &quot;active&quot; ingredient<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;15929894" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;15929894</a>

We need to invest more into development of gene drives for elimination of agricultural pests.<p>The recent development of gene drive on doublesex gene for mosquitoes gives hope that it can work for majority of insects.<p>And if we find a way to use similar technique for plants, the resulting reduction of pesticide use will be helpful not only for the people but also for remaining species of insects and plants.

This is a &quot;coffee causes cancer&quot; type of study. The concentrations involved are very high. And as they say, &quot;the dose makes the poison&quot;.<p>But it&#x27;s a great first study; there will be lots of people looking a lot closer at the link now.

Bayer really messed up with their Monsanto acquisition. Right when sentiment against the company reached a breaking point, and people finally began imposing a concerted backlash.

Glyphosate is the main ingredient in &quot;Round up&quot;. I imagine residential use probably has a minimal impact, but this seems like a big problem considering the rise of &quot;Round up resistant&quot; crops. When whole fields are being sprayed at scale, seems like that could be very disruptive to a bee population.

Maybe some self righteous &quot;skeptics&quot; could take this as a moment to apologize, figuratively or actually, to the people they derided as &quot;quacks&quot; for urging caution about glyphosate.

Is there a living creature without a microbiome?

Is this the reason they have been dying! WOOT! Will we be able to change fast enough to save them?