Hemp Extract Could Protect Bee Population, Study Finds

From early 2020, you may the name Murder Hornets. As it swept the news, many feared for their personal safety. The real threat, however, was not to the human population, but rather the bee population. Now, the news may have moved on, but concern over falling numbers in the bee population has not.

If Not Murder Hornets, What’s The Problem?

Pesticides and insecticides are intended to harm insects by design, so it is no surprise that these chemicals can harm or even kill bees that find their way onto pesticide-treated crops.

However, just because these deaths are somewhat expected, doesn’t mean that the extent of these deaths isn’t concerning. In 2019, the rollback of pesticide regulations in Brazil was linked to bee corpses that were found in mass piles in early spring. The deaths were estimated to be around half a billion honeybees. Similar concerns have been raised regarding pesticide rule changes in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Big Deal

The importance of bees to the global ecosystem cannot be understated. Any widespread collapse would be far more devastating than a wilting patch of flowers in your garden. Honey bees perform roughly 80 percent of all plant pollination worldwide. And, about 70 of the top 100 human food crops (accounting for approximately 90 percent of the world’s nutrition) rely on bees as key pollinators.

Cannabis Could Be The Answer

A research team at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Poland think that they have found a solution in the cannabis plant.

Inspired by past studies that have linked cannabinoids, such as CBD, to beneficial neurological effects in humans, the Bee-Research group, led by Professor Aneta Ptaszyńska of the University’s Department of Immunobiology, wondered if this protective effect on nerve cells might also hold true for honeybees.

The team’s discovery could be a significant breakthrough for bee conservation, which would simultaneously benefit the many ecosystems that depend on bees as pollinators.

The Study Explained

The researchers studied around 5,000 bees, looking at the potential protective effects of hemp extracts against the action of neonicotinoid pesticides.

“Bees are dying because they are malnourished and weakened by the use of pesticides and then they start to suffer from various diseases,” Ptaszyńska said. “One of them is nosemosis. It attacks the digestive system, causes weakness and cachexia (muscle loss). Bees cannot digest and absorb nutrients and then they simply die.”

The research team found that bees exposed to both a neonicotinoid pesticide and hemp extract not only lived longer than the bees only exposed to the pesticide, but they also lived just as long as the bees that had no contact at all with the pesticide. Further research is planned to confirm these results.

Past Research

This is not the first study to draw a link between hemp and a healthy bee population. Earlier this year, researchers from Cornell University published a study in the journal Environmental Entomology describing how thousands of bees are now using hemp crops as a critical nutritional resource.

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