Light therapy could save bees from deadly pesticides

Treating bees with light therapy can counteract the harmful effects of neonicotinoid pesticides and improve survival rates of poisoned bees, finds a new UCL study. 'Neonicotinoid pesticides are a persistent threat to global bee populations, which play a critical role in agriculture,' says Professor Glen Jeffery (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology), the senior author of the PLOS ONE paper. 'My team is working to develop a small device that can be fitted into a commercial hive, which could be an economic solution to a problem with very widespread implications.' The pesticides undermine mitochondrial function and compromise the production of ATP, the currency for energy that drives cellular function. This results in reduced mobility among bees exposed to neonicotinoids, leading them to die of starvation, unable to feed themselves. The researchers used four groups of bees from commercial hives, with more than 400 bees in each colony. Two groups were exposed to a neonicotinoid, Imidacloprid, for ten days, with one group also being treated with light therapy over the same period - 15 minutes of near infrared light (670nm) was shone into the hive twice daily. The mobility of the bees that were poisoned but not treated with light therapy dropped off rapidly, as did their ATP levels, and their survival rate declined accordingly.