Toxicity of Imidacloprid to Apis cerana

Imidacloprid, due to its low toxicity and low residual, has been widely used in agricultural productions, including grain crop, commercial crop, fruit trees, tea leaves, and vegetables. Aiming to evaluate the toxicity of imidacloprid to Apis cerana, the A. cerana were fed with the sucrose solutions of imidacloprid with different concentrations. The result showed that after feeding A. cerana with imidacloprid with the concentrations of 10, 2, 0.5, 0.02 mg/L, the feed intake of 21 h were 0.08, 0.08, 0.29, 5.39 μL, and the mortalities were 25%, 2%, 2%, 5%. But the control group was 12.69 μL and 9%. As a result, the imidacloprid can affect on the feed intake and mortality of A. cerana. Moreover, this phenomenon will become severe when the concentration of imidacloprid increases. In addition, mortality is controlled by the total consumption and the concentration of imidacloprids.