Modeling Effects of Honeybee Behaviors on the Distribution of Pesticide in Nectar within a Hive and Resultant in-Hive Exposure.

Recently, the causes of honeybee colony losses have been intensely studied, showing that there are multiple stressors implicated in colony declines, one stressor being the exposure to pesticides. Measuring exposure of individual bees within a hive to pesticide is at least as difficult as assessing the potential exposure of foraging bees to pesticide. We present a model to explore how heterogeneity of pesticide distribution on a comb in the hive can be driven by worker behaviors.

Predicting Honeybee Colony Failure: Using the BEEHAVE Model to Simulate Colony Responses to Pesticides.

To simulate effects of pesticides on different honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) life stages, we used the BEEHAVE model to explore how increased mortalities of larvae, in-hive workers, and foragers, as well as reduced egg-laying rate, could impact colony dynamics over multiple years. Stresses were applied for 30 days, both as multiples of the modeled control mortality and as set percentage daily mortalities to assess the sensitivity of the modeled colony both to small fluctuations in mortality and periods of low to very high daily mortality.