Honey bees live in dynamic communities and constantly communicate with each other using chemicals that serve as social cues. For example, nurse bees -- that are responsible for taking care of larvae that ultimately become queens and worker bees -- constantly monitor the larvae using in the dark using pheromones. One of the stressors that have raised concerns are insecticides, which affect honey bee health. Because these are usually used in combination with other chemicals, the resulting mixture can become unexpectedly toxic to bees. in addition to insecticides, fungicides also have an adverse effect on bees and combining the two can disrupt colony function.

The researchers divided bees into four groups of ten bees and for a week exposed them to either untreated commercial pollen or to pollen that had been treated with either Dyne-Amic, or Tilt and Altacor, or all three together. The researchers then exposed the antenna to chemical mimics of brood and alarm pheromones and recorded the antenna's response using a technique called electroantennography. With this method, found that when nurse bees had consumed pollen contaminated by the three chemicals, their antennal responses to some brood pheromones and alarm pheromones were altered.

Their finding suggests that these commonly-used pesticides can interfere with honey bee communication. How these chemicals interact and influence the bees is still unclear. There are many possible explanations for how consuming these chemicals can affect the sensory responses of bees In addition to parsing out the underlying molecular pathways that are affected, the researchers are also interested in testing other mixtures of commonly used pesticides as well as looking at the response of bees in other populations. They hope that their work can help beekeepers rethink how they manage and protect their colonies.