A team of British researchers thinks
aluminum may be another factor in the disturbing decline in bee populations.
Their study, published on PLOS ONE, says
aluminum, is "one of the most significant environmental contaminant of
recent times."
Bees typically do not avoid aluminum,
which can be found in nectar, so that led researchers to collect pupae samples
from natural colonies of foraging bees that were then tested for aluminum
content.
Chris Exley and Ellen Rotheray of Keele University worked with Dave
Goulson of the University of Sussex and found the pupae were heavily
contaminated with aluminum.
Bees have pretty complex brains, and
there's evidence to support that there is a presence of memory, a high-level
cognitive function. Although aluminum is considered a neurotoxin, and was
initially linked to Alzheimer's disease in humans, the Alzheimer's Society in
the United Kingdom advises a direct link has not been proven "despite
continuing investigation."
The findings are leaving the researchers
to question whether high amounts of aluminum-induced cognitive dysfunction is
another factor leading to the bees' demise.
Other researchers have linked
neonicitinoid seed-treatment pesticides with brain damage to bees.
They
normally can remember their way home after foraging for nectar and pollen, but
the researchers found that those exposed to neonicitinoids lost that ability
and they found some hives completely empty.
The question remains whether the results
of either set of studies is confused between aluminum and neonicitinoids as the
cause of what they have observed.
