ArticleNature communications2022
A deeper understanding of system interactions can explain contradictory field results on pesticide impact on honey bees.
Article in Nature communications, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Disruption of Antioxidant Defense Systems in Honey Bees and Wild Bees Under Environmental Xenobiotic Pressure.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Methylene Blue Alleviates Thiamethoxam-Induced Toxicity in Honeybee Larvae by Activating Dihydrolipoyl Dehydrogenase.Insects · 2026Article
- Disentangling the influence of environmental conditions on sex determination in haplodiploid organisms.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Understanding Stress Response in Superorganisms: A Multi-Level and Cybernetic Approach.Ecology and evolution · 2025Review
- Environmental pollution effect on honey bees and their derived products: a comprehensive analysis.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2025Review
- Parasite and Pesticide Impacts on the Bumblebee (International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
While there is widespread concern regarding the impact of pesticides on honey bees, well-replicated field experiments, to date, have failed to provide clear insights on pesticide effects. Here, we adopt a systems biology approach to gain insights into the web of interactions amongst the factors influencing honey bee health. We put the focus on the properties of the system that depend upon its architecture and not on the strength, often unknown, of each single interaction. Then we test in vivo, on caged honey bees, the predictions derived from this modelling analysis. We show that the impact of toxic compounds on honey bee health can be shaped by the concurrent stressors affecting bees. We demonstrate that the immune-suppressive capacity of the widespread pathogen of bees, deformed wing virus, can introduce a critical positive feed-back loop in the system causing bistability, i.e., two stable equilibria. Therefore, honey bees under similar initial conditions can experience different consequences when exposed to the same stressor, including prolonged survival or premature death. The latter can generate an increased vulnerability of the hive to dwindling and collapse. Our conclusions reconcile contrasting field-testing outcomes and have important implications for the application of field studies to complex systems.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.