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

ABSTRACT: 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. These stresses simulate stylized exposure of the different life stages to nectar and pollen contaminated with pesticide for 30 days. Increasing adult bee mortality had a much greater impact on colony survival than mortality of bee larvae or reduction in egg

SUBMITTER: Rumkee JC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4633771 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature