There has been growing concern over the past few years about world's bees decline, as the population of these flying insects, vital for pollination and ultimately the growth of the producing industry, have been declining for years - and now scientists have discovered a new reason for their seeming disappearance.
Besides marking the lowering of beloved and healthy natural products such as beeswax and honey, bees decline means a staggering blow to agriculture-based economies all over the world, as The Daily Mail reports that these flying insects add a value of more than $15 billion annually to crops, besides the fact that every third bite of food humans take was directly or indirectly made possible by bees.
According to Phys Org, a new scientific collaboration between two British professors (Chris Exley from Keele University and Dave Goulson from the University of Sussex) has shed new light on the reason of bees' decline over the past few years - and particularly, the role aluminum has taken in this scenario.
Sputnik News explains that, for their study on bees' decline, Exley and Goulson took bee pupae (the "bag" larvae form before turning into fully grown bumblebees) from naturally foraging populations in the UK, then analyzing it for aluminum levels, as it had been already found that they don't avoid eating nectar with high levels of this metal.
The results were staggering, possibly shedding some light into the bees' decline crisis: these pupae were found to be highly contaminated with the metal, and individual contents went from 13 to 200ppm; in fact, 3 ppm could be potentially harmful to human brain tissue, and so the excessive amount on bees could prove an important factor in their decline over the past years.
"Bees, of course, rely heavily on cognitive function in their everyday behaviour and these data raise the intriguing spectre that aluminium-induced cognitive dysfunction may play a role in their population decline - are we looking at bees with Alzheimer's disease?" asks Exley.
There has been a lot of speculation on whether aluminum truly causes dementia or Alzheimer's in humans, though it has never been proven - but it's clear its presence can be an important factor on bees' decline.
