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Pesticide¹ Additive² Could Be One Culprit in Bee Deaths

农药添加剂——蜜蜂死亡的一大元凶

Springtime is flower season. And that includes some 90 million almond trees in California. It's the largest pollination³ event in the U.S.—and beekeepers truck in two thirds of the nation's captive honeybees to do the job. But for the last decade or so, the keepers have complained about failing colonies, with underdeveloped bees ejected from their hives.

春天是花开的季节，也是加州约9000万棵杏树授粉的时节。这是美国最大型的一次授粉盛事，养蜂人的卡车载着全国约三分之二的圈养蜜蜂来做这项工作。但在过去十年里，养蜂人一直在抱怨蜂群衰竭，蜂巢中不断出现早夭的蜜蜂。

\Now a study identifies one possible culprits. Not a pesticide, but one of the many ingredients used alongside them. "So these are added into a formulation to enhance the efficacy of the active ingredients." Julia Fine, an entomologist at Penn State. "It's just called "other ingredients" and they often are the bulk of the formulated⁴ product."

现在一项研究鉴定出导致这种状况的一个可能的罪魁祸首。它不是农药，而是和农药一起使用的多种成分之一。“这些成分被添加到配方中，以提高活性成分的功效。”宾夕法尼亚州立大学的昆虫学家茱莉亚·法恩说道。“它的名称就是‘其他成分’，而通常它们却正是配方产品的主要成分。”

The chemical in question is known as an organosilicone surfactant. Fine and her colleagues fed the chemical to honeybee larvae⁵ over time, and exposed them to a cocktail⁶ of common beehive viruses. And they found that larvae exposed to the chemical and the viruses together appeared to die in greater numbers than did bees exposed to the viruses or the chemical alone—a possible synergistic effect. And the symptoms they saw mirrored the ones beekeepers observed in their hives. The study is in the journal Scientific Reports.

这种化学物质被称为有机硅表面活性剂。法恩和她的同事们把这种化学物质喂给蜜蜂幼虫，并把它们暴露在一种常见的蜂巢病毒的混合物中。她们发现，同时接触化学物质和病毒的幼虫的死亡数量比只接触病毒或只接触化学物质的蜜蜂的死亡数量要多得多——这可能是协同效应产生的结果。他们看到的症状恰恰反映出了养蜂人在自己蜂巢里发现的现象。这项研究发表在《科学报告》杂志上。

Fine and her team still have to determine how much of these chemicals actually make it into the bees' food. But they do know hundreds of thousands of pounds of them are used in almond orchards⁷ each year. And elsewhere. "Agriculture is just one use for organosilicone surfactants. It's all over the place. So if we can find it has any effect in an organism, it will be relevant."

法恩和她的团队仍然需要确定这些化学物质到底有多少成了蜜蜂的食物。虽然她们很清楚每年有成千上万磅这些成分被用了到杏园，以及其他地方。“农业只是有机硅表面活性剂的用途之一。它们被用到了各个地方。因此，如果我们能发现它对有机体有任何影响，那将会很有意义。”