Biomonitoring the Environmental Quality by Bees

Modern farming techniques have increased the crop yield, but natural habitats of the pollinator were destroyed, affecting their populations compared to native vegetation. A simple, low-cost, and efficient way to determine the presence of insecticide residues from farming is the honeybee as a bioindicator. However in Brazil, there is another species of bee, the stingless bees. The insecticide toxicity analyses the beneficial insect species as pollinators which are performed to the Apis mellifera. Stingless bees are native to tropical and subtropical zones, and they are more sensitive to pesticides than honeybees. We present some results of contamination in these bees compared to Africanized honeybees, and pose an important question: Why does the pesticide industry not make assays with stingless bees too? When insecticides were in larger concentrations, bees did not feed. When the concentration of the insecticide was smaller, Africanized honeybees consumed the polluted honey, resulting in the death of some. Finally, we report several experiments concerning honeybees, and mainly stingless bees, and the effect of pesticides in them; results show stingless bees are more sensitive than honeybees. Our Bee Research Group studied this point, and we hope to contribute for understanding this relation between bee, pesticide, and environment