PubMed · 2026-05-05
Common pyrethroid pesticides — even at doses too low to kill bees — impair honey bees' ability to learn and remember which flowers smell like food, threatening their effectiveness as pollinators.
Sublethal doses of permethrin and cypermethrin impaired both habituation (non-associative learning) and olfactory associative learning and memory in honey bees.
Calcium imaging showed cypermethrin did not alter odor signal intensity or the distinctiveness of odor patterns in the antennal lobe (primary smell-processing region), pointing to higher brain centers as the site of cognitive disruption.
Honey bees are responsible for approximately 80% of human crop pollination, meaning cognitive impairment from widely-used pesticides carries significant agricultural and ecological consequences.