Toxicity of thiametoxam on in vitro reared honey bee brood

Pesticides are a possible cause of pollinator decline and honey bee colony losses experienced in several countries in recent years. In the past years, many north-west Italian beekeepers reported the presence of dead brood in field apiaries during neonicotinoid-coated maize sowing; therefore, a possible role of these insecticides was suspected. The objective of this study was to test this hypothesis. Laboratory repeated dose toxicity tests on in vitro reared larvae were carried out using thiamethoxam. The repeated treatment median lethal concentration (LC50) and the median lethal dose (LD50) 14 and 19 days after grafting were calculated and resulted of the same order of magnitude of realistic brood exposure under a worst-case scenario. Various sublethal effects, like brownish larvae, duplication of the pupal integument, delay in development, and deformed adults were also observed.