Oral or Topical Exposure to Glyphosate in Herbicide Formulation Impacts the Gut Microbiota and Survival Rates of Honey Bees.

Honey bees are important agricultural pollinators that rely on a specific gut microbiota for the regulation of their immune system and defense against pathogens. Environmental stressors that affect the bee gut microbial community, such as antibiotics and glyphosate, can indirectly compromise bee health. Most of the experiments demonstrating these effects have been done under laboratory conditions with pure chemicals. Here, we investigated the oral and topical effects of various concentrations of glyphosate in a herbicide formulation on the honey bee gut microbiota and health under laboratory and field conditions. Under all of these conditions, the formulation, dissolved in sucrose syrup or water, affected the abundance of beneficial bacteria in the bee gut in a dose-dependent way. Mark-recapture experiments also demonstrated that bees exposed to the formulation were more likely to disappear from the colony, once reintroduced after exposure. Although no visible effects were observed for hives exposed to the formulation in field experiments, challenge trials with the pathogen

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