Alteration of the homing‐flight in the honey bee Apis mellifera L. Exposed to sublethal dose of deltamethrin

Abstract

Foraging activity of bees is currently disturbed by treatments with pyrethroid agrochemicals. To discover eventual troubles of spatial orientation of the foragers, we exposed bees to sublethal doses of deltamethrin sufficiently low to avoid motor incoordination or muscular troubles. In an insect-proof tunnel, bees were trained to forage at a feeder 8 m from their nucleus. When temperature and global radiance conditions were optimal, some foragers were caught, exposed to a deltamethrin dose 27 times lower than its LD50, and released after 20 min of recovering. Among the contaminated bees, 54% took flight toward the sun and 81% did not come back to their nest within 30 s (which is 3 times longer than the mean time of control bees). Because pyrethroids are known to disturb learning and memory, we cannot conclude if this disorientation is due either to a trouble of information storage (wrong spatial perception or phototropism increase), or to a trouble of information retrieval (bad comparison of actual and memorized patterns). Routine chemical analysis of exposed bees does not detect residues of deltamethrin 3 h after bee sublethal exposure, although bees evidenced alteration in the flight.