14 DAY TRIAL // Recent investigations have revealed that, when exposed to chemical compounds found in diesel exhaust, honey bees have a rather difficult time figuring out where the flowers on which they rely for food are located.
Hence the fact that they go hungry and, in some cases, die due to starvation.
Researchers explain that, in order to determine how diesel exhaust affects bees, they carried have out several experiments.
Thus, they first stuck the bees in an enclosed space and exposed them to a natural flower odor. As expected, the bees did not take long to react to the scent, i.e. they stuck out their tongues.
Later, the bees were once again exposed to the natural flower odor, only that this time, the researchers also “sprinkled” some diesel exhaust in the enclosed space.
According to Ecorazzi, the bees failed to recognize the odor and react to it, meaning that they did not stuck out their tongues.
In light of these findings, specialists speculate that the drop in the world's honey bee population reported over these past few years might have also been caused by the presence of diesel exhaust in the areas that these insects inhabit.