Originally posted on Quora November 20, 2022

Pollinating insects are integral to the production of 35% of the world’s food supply and increase the output of 87 of the leading crops of which 13 are entirely reliant, 30 greatly dependent and 27 are moderately dependent on pollinators such as bees. For instance, it takes 1.4 million colonies of honeybees to pollinate 550,000 acres of almond trees. Their population decline could put our own in jeopardy and much of the population decline for bees has come as a result of infestations of parasitic pathogens or so we think. Although Monsanto has long claimed that their glyphosate herbicide does not kill bees, new research has found that the poison alters bees' gut biome by killing off some symbiotic bacteria in their gut, compromising their immunity and making them more susceptible to infection.

The researchers exposed honeybees to glyphosate at levels known to occur in crop fields, yards and roadsides. The researchers painted the bees’ backs with colored dots so they could be tracked and later recaptured. Three days later, they observed that the herbicide significantly reduced healthy gut microbiota. Of eight dominant species of healthy bacteria in the exposed bees, four were found to be less abundant. The hardest hit bacterial species, Snodgrassella alvi, is a critical microbe that helps bees process food and defend against pathogens.

The same bees who lost gut microbiota were far more likely to succumb to pathogens they were later exposed to.

About half of bees with a healthy microbiome were still alive eight days after exposure to the pathogen, while only about a tenth of bees whose microbiomes had been altered by exposure to the herbicide were still alive.

This research came years after beekeepers across the US noticed a sudden decline in their colonies, and entire hives being abandoned without explanation, that coincided with the rollout of roundup ready GM crops.

Of course, glyphosate is not the only artificial culprit. Neonicotinoids, a type of pesticide produced by Bayer and Monsanto, in seeds pretreated with neonicotinoids, have also been found to make bees more susceptible to pathogens like parasitic mites by reducing their body mass, even at sub lethal levels, when combined with parasitic mites infections. Neonic pesticides have also been observed drifting from fields in dust clouds impairing the ability of bees to navigate and remember food sources.