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June 7th, 2015 
David Schulberg 
The decline in the bee population could be caused by the insect’s high contamination of aluminum, a chemical element implicated as a factor in Alzheimer’s disease in humans, a new study has found.
It’s believed that a
number of factors are likely to be involved in the decline of
bees: from a lack of flowers to attacks by parasites. But
biologists at Keele University and the University of Sussex in
the UK decided to find out whether aluminum, the “most
significant environmental contaminant of recent times,”
could prove to play the key role in the insect’s decline.
READ MORE: 40 percent of US honeybee
population lost over year, as mysterious die-off
accelerates
Previous research had suggested that when bees forage for nectar
they don’t avoid nectar which contains aluminum. So researchers
measured the content of aluminum in bee pupae taken from
naturally foraging colonies in the UK.
They found levels of the metal content in bee pupae that ranged
from 13 to 193 ppm [parts per million.] In humans, brain
aluminium content in excess of 3 ppm “might be considered as
pathological with possible contributions towards
neurodegenerative disease including Alzheimer’s disease,”
the study, published in the journal PLOS One,
said.
READ MORE: World’s first ‘bumblebee highway’
opened in Norway
Researchers say that a number of human activities, such as the
burning of fossil fuels resulting in “acid rain” and the
mining of aluminium ores to make aluminum metal and salts, have
contributed to the thriving biological availability of this
“non-essential metal.”
As a result, fish, trees, crops and humans have all been affected
by aluminium. Evidence suggests that bees are not immune to its
increasing prevalence, with analysis from Brazil having
previously indicated that “pollen is heavily contaminated
with aluminium.”
“Aluminum is a known neurotoxin affecting behaviour in animal
models of aluminum intoxication. Bees, of course, rely heavily on
cognitive function in their everyday behaviour and these data
raise the intriguing spectre that aluminium-induced cognitive
dysfunction may play a role in their population decline – are we
looking at bees with Alzheimer’s disease?” said Professor Chris Exley, a leading
authority on human exposure to aluminium, from Keele University.
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’Bees with Alzheimer’s?’ Aluminium pollution linked to dementia in bees
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