Impact of an Oomen feeding with a neonicotinoid on daily activity and colony development of honeybees assessed with an AI based monitoring device

Feeding experiments are standard tools in the pollinator risk assessment. The design (Oomen et al 1992) was developed to test insect growth regulators and herbicides. In recent years there was an update (Luckmann & Schmitzer 2015) on the outline in order to also focus on the advantage of different rates making a dose response design possible where exposure levels are known. Additionally, this design gives the possibility to test different rates for honey bee colonies foraging in the same landscape. The main objective of the experiment presented here was to determine the natural variability of foragers losses of hives fed with a sub-lethal neonicotinoid concentration compared to an untreated control. Other objectives were to see if the neurotoxic exposure results in any observable sub-lethal effects and to find out if losses can be correlated to hive development. This was assessed with traditional methods and a novel, visual monitoring device.