Each treatment had three hoop houses dedicated to each treatment and the control group. "We didn't know which treatments were assigned to which hoop house but boy, oh boy, you could quickly tell something was going on in three of those hoop houses," Chan said. The researchers set up hoop houses to grow squash plants, applied pesticides, then introduced the bees into the hoop houses just as the plants were beginning to flower. About 75 per cent of bee species are solitary, ground-nesting bees while honey bees will live in a hive or other opening above ground. The seed treatment uses did not pose a significant risk to squash bees in the Guelph research or in Health Canada's 2019 pollinator re-evaluation decisions," he said.

Source: CBC News March 06, 2021 18:00 UTC