After a Massive Bee Kill, a Scientist Challenges Pesticide Policies

In 2016, Judy Wu-Smart saw every sign that her career was off to a great start.

She was starting a new post as leader of the bee lab at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Her doctoral dissertation, on the health of queen bees, had made headlines. Her students were kicking off some intriguing new research.

Then all her bees started dying.

“We would walk into our bee yards,” she said, “and your heart would just sink.”

In colony after colony, the bees were shaking and seizing. They were “dying in this horrendous way,” said Wu-Smart, who is an associate professor of entomology.

Since her investigation started in 2017, about 90 colonies have died, each of which contained 20,000 to 30,000 bees. She said her typical work day involved seeing “piles and piles of dead bees.”

Their symptoms, she said, were consistent with exposure to toxins.

The likely cause: Not far from the bee yards, a plant was converting excess crop seeds coated with neonicotinoids – a pesticide that’s chemically similar to nicotine – into ethanol.