**3.1 Oral intake**

*Modern Beekeeping - Bases for Sustainable Production*

interest for human to protect the pollinators.

insect pollinators, visiting a crop (**Figure 1**).

whole colony via drift through wind

**2. Routes of exposures to different pesticides**

systemic pesticides drawn from the soil, or they can be contaminated from topical pesticide applications or drift from such applications. Different agro-chemicals like, herbicides, fungicides and most importantly the insecticides, alone and in combination with other factors such as elevated temperature, production of hybrid varieties with lesser quantity of pollen and nectar in their flowers, have caused a devastating effect on honey bees at a global level [2, 8, 9]. Bee foragers may bring such contaminated floral rewards back to the colony for feeding and storing as a resource for future generations [10]. Pesticides which are being used in agriculture crops are highly toxic to bees as they kill the bees through many ways such as, direct killing of foraging workers with their acute toxicity, drifting out from agricultural land to nearby apiaries, thus, making the whole colony more susceptible to different pathogens and to some point reduce their possibility to thrive in the nature by getting accumulated in the pollen inside the colony. Nectars produced by some flowering plant species also contain plant-synthesized chemicals which are toxic to different pollinators [11]. The introduction of chemical pesticides and further increase in its demand in the market is not actually the basic requirements of the farmer; rather it is their mere ignorance. The farmers discriminately use these agro-chemicals with a purpose to manage the pests; instead, they end up with killing their own beneficial insects, i.e., the pollinators. Honey bees and other pollinators get exposed to different toxic agro-chemicals in nature through different paths and these different pesticides affect honey bee colonies to different levels thus; to minimize the losses to pollinators from the adverse effect of pesticide poisoning is a burning topic of

The different types of pesticidal formulations travel across the plant through different ways in order to protect the plant or part of it from different factors such as weeds, pathogen, insect pests or rodents, etc. According to the nature of the different pesticides, three principal application methods that are often used to treat crops are: direct spray, which is often used around homes and gardens; soil applications and seed applications, typically used in larger treatment systems. These different methods of application play a crucial role in the exposure of these chemicals to the

Thus, on the basis of different application methods and the persistence of different pesticides in nature, bees get exposed to different pesticides through these

2.Pesticide particles of dust formulations sticking to the foraging bees or to

4.Pesticidal drift to non-treated foraging plants growing nearby to the treated

These different routes for exposure of various pesticides to honey bees facilitate

their entry into a honey bee colony system, but still the mode by which, these

1.Direct contact with chemical during foraging on a treated plant

3.Pesticidal runoff from the treated fields to nearby water reservoirs

5.Pesticidal residues in pollen through seed treatment [12]

**14**

major routes:

crop [12]

Oral intake of chemical pesticides from fields is facilitated through the foraging worker bees. Plants treated with different systemic insecticides, produce nectar and pollen containing these insecticides and thus, worker bees collecting this floral resource carries to the colonies to store it into the colony and further use to feed the young developing brood [13]. Several reports of an extremely high concentration of different pesticidal compounds, including insecticides, fungicides, miticides and herbicides have been reported from pollen samples of several crops [12, 14]. These events, from collecting the pollen in the field to feeding to the developing brood results in to a chain of catastrophic events as: foragers are killed during collecting and transporting such contaminated pollen, nurse bees are killed while storing and feeding pollen and the brood are killed by consuming the toxic pollen, thus, leading to a total collapse of the colony.
