Bees can suffer serious effects from toxic chemicals in their environments. These include various synthetic chemicals,[1] particularly insecticides, as well as a variety of naturally occurring chemicals from plants, such as ethanol resulting from the fermentation of organic materials. Bee intoxication can result from exposure to ethanol from fermented nectar, ripe fruits, and manmade and natural chemicals in the environment.[2][3]
The effects of alcohol on bees are sufficiently similar to the effects of alcohol on humans that honey bees have been used as models of human ethanol intoxication.[4] The metabolism of bees and humans is sufficiently different that bees can safely collect nectars from plants that contain compounds toxic to humans. The honey produced by bees from these toxic nectars can be poisonous if consumed by humans.
Natural processes can also introduce toxic substances into nontoxic honey produced from nontoxic nectar. Microorganisms in honey can convert some of the sugars in honey to ethanol. This process of ethanol fermentation is intentionally harnessed to produce the alcoholic beverage called mead from fermented honey.
^Tosi, Simone; Costa, Cecilia; Vesco, Umberto; Quaglia, Giancarlo; Guido, Giovanni (2018). "A survey of honey bee-collected pollen reveals widespread contamination by agricultural pesticides". Science of the Total Environment. 615: 208–218. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.09.226. PMID28968582. S2CID19956612.
^Of course, other creatures are not immune to the effects of alcohol:
Many of us have noticed that bees or yellow jackets cannot fly well after having drunk the juice of overripe fruits or berries; bears have been seen to stagger and fall down after eating fermented honey; and birds often crash or fly haphazardly while intoxicated on ethanol that occurs naturally as free-floating microorganisms convert vegetable carbohydrates to [alcohol] (Warren K. Bickel; Richard J. DeGrandpre (1996). Drug Policy and Human Nature: Psychological Perspectives On The Prevention, Management, and Treatment of Illicit Drug Abuse. Springer. ISBN978-0-306-45241-3.)
^Fruit flies and other insects also exhibit symptoms of ethanol intoxication (Heberlein, Ulrike; Wolf, Fred W.; Rothenfluh, Adrian; Guarnieri, Douglas J. (2004). "Molecular Genetic Analysis of Ethanol Intoxication in Drosophila melanogaster". Integrative and Comparative Biology. 44 (4): 269–274. CiteSeerX10.1.1.536.262. doi:10.1093/icb/44.4.269. PMID21676709. S2CID14762870.)