Date of Award

5-2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Departmental Honors

Department

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Abstract

Bees play an important role in ecosystems and food production through pollination. One such bee, the alfalfa leaf cutting bee (ALCB) is a very efficient pollinator and is essential in alfalfa seed production. However, bees face increasing harm, most notably due to the deleterious effect of pesticides used in agriculture, and much research is dedicated to investigating the extent of effects that pesticides have on different bee populations. One common tool used to study the effects of pesticide exposure on bees is semi-field cages. These cages have some key advantages, such as restricting bee foraging to plots sprayed with pesticides and simulating agroecosystem conditions. However, these semi-field studies operate under the assumption that the environmental conditions are the same and that pesticides loss will occur at the same rate. To test this assumption, field experiments were conducted. These experiments were conducted by spraying three common-use pesticides on alfalfa leaves inside and outside of field cages and determining the concentrations of pesticides on the leaves over a period of seven days while monitoring the meteorological conditions in each environment. Upon completion of this study, it was found and concluded that there were no significant differences in pesticide loss rates, suggesting that the pesticides used in this study did in fact behave similarly inside and outside of semi-field cages during these experiments.

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Faculty Mentor

Kimberly Hageman

Departmental Honors Advisor

Ryan Jackson