# Talk:Bees and toxic chemicals

I am concerned that this article no longer meets the good article criteria. Some of my concerns are listed below:

There are some uncited statements.
There is a large use of block quotes that should probably be summarised and reduced/removed.
There are sources listed in "Further reading" that should be incorporated into the article or removed.
"Toxic plant honey" suffers from MOS:OVERSECTION and these sections probably need to be expanded.
Is anyone interested in fixing up this article, or should it be sent to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 20:25, 5 October 2024 (UTC)


### Bees and toxic chemicals
The current title, Bees and toxic chemicals, may not accurately represent the scientific content or scope of the article.  That's to say, there is a structural problem stemming from the title itself. 
I looked back at the history of this wiki and its seems to have been beset by problems from the beginning.  The phrase 'toxic chemicals' suggests that certain substances are 'intrinsically' toxic, but in toxicology, toxicity depends on dose, exposure, and context (so even oxygen can be toxic to humans, for example, and so can clean water.) A major focus in the article (ethanol inebriation in bees) involves 'physiological or behavioral effects' when bees come into contact with naturally occurring alcohol, rather than toxicity in the stricter sense.  It also blurs temporary effects from ingestion of such alcohol with serious or fatal effects from synthetic chemicals. The historic focus on human-like aspects of this 'drunkenness'  only accentuates this further. 
This framing may conflict with WP:ACCURACY and WP:NPOV, as it introduces an implied value judgment about certain chemicals from an anthropocentric viewpoint rather than describing their effects neutrally. 
In turn, this downplays the seriousness of accidental exposure to anthropogenic substances that are fatal or harmful to bees.
I considered in turn if titles such as Bees and chemical exposure, Bees and environmental contaminants, or Chemical effects on bees might better align with WP:TITLE, which advises that titles be concise, precise, and neutral.
Then, of course, we are left with the elephant in the room, which is that another article, Pesticide toxicity to bees, already deals with pesticides.
This 'catch all' title doesn't do any favors.  It allows for blending of very natural exposure to alcohols, causing temporary behavioral effects,to be placed side by side with synthetic chemicals such as pesticides. 
Only then, because there is already an article on that subject, it can't go any deeper.  A one sentence highlight of the article as it stands, with all its noted problems, is that bees can get drunk on naturally occurring alcohols.   That seems like a very flimsy basis for a whole wiki.  I sense that this should be re-titled, or moved somewhere. 
On long consideration, it fits best in the main article on Bees and I propose to move it there.  The altered behaviors from ingestion of naturally-occurring alcohol are easily dealt with there.   
The current article replicates content that is in Bees and Pesticides and that can be stripped out and allocated there to avoid the duplication that exists.  
As I have now been through the article in detail and poinpointed that it contains little salvagable content, this is my intention - to move it to Bees.  
Please can any responses make explicit reference to the points I have raised.  Thank you. Astral highway (talk) 15:27, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

I disagree with your suggested approach, and can be specific. Mostly, it just needs a new title. (1) just delete all the references to pesticides, and that problem is gone, and the article does not suffer at all from its absence. There should be zero overlap between this and the "Bees and pesticides" article, I agree, and no one will question your taking any such steps to eliminate that overlap. (2) a "one-sentence summary" is not that the article is about bee inebriation. Is it overemphasized? Yes, and that can be dealt with by a little judicious editing, but mostly by adding more information on things like toxic pollen and toxic nectar, which are presently given far too little discussion, given how important they are. (3) is alcohol toxic? Yes. That's not disputed. Not all toxins are lethal at low doses. (4) you spent a lot of time and effort to find every single thing in the article that is not directly cited, but without any sign that you read what the sources said (sometimes, three or four sentences all were sourced from the one link at the end of the last sentence, rather than being cited for each individual sentence or sentence fragment). That includes deleting dead links entirely without attempting to locate other live sources for the same information, and stating "failed verification" for news items for which the news item is gone, but for which the original research that the news item cited are still available online. (5) along these same lines, there are a fair number of things that were mentioned in the article, and not sourced, but which should be easy enough to verify and source, but instead of doing so, you simply flagged them all as if they were untrue and impossible to prove. Many of these have links easily found already within Wikipedia (e.g.,) - and it's unfair if you made no attempt to find such sources before flagging everything as uncited or unverifiable. In a sense, you appear to be trying to bias the argument in favor of deleting the article, instead of trying to be constructive about improving it.
Frankly, the "elephant in the room" is that there is no good choice for an unwieldy title. The fact is that there are some plants that produce chemicals that are toxic to bees, and this isn't actually a small topic. It needs a better title, better sourcing, and more information (esp. on things like linden, rhododendron, Heliconia, etc.). It's viable as a standalone, but it needs work. Could you live with changing the title to "Bees and naturally toxic plant chemicals"? That would certainly make it clear that the article has no overlap with the pesticides article, and it would still keep inebriation as a sub-topic. Dyanega (talk) 17:12, 13 October 2025 (UTC)
I think I would be opposed to the proposed merge above, and would align a bit more with what you're suggesting Dyanega. Scope is an issue, though maybe we don't even need to change the title? We could leave the title as is, have the article primarily focus on plant chemicals, but also cover some other odds and ends in lesser amounts. Pesticide toxicity to bees could have a single section with a paragraph to be treated as a WP:DAUGHTER article so that pesticide stuff really isn't covered here. Would that make more sense? KoA (talk) 16:22, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
Hi KoA. To summarise why I think we have a problem, based on wikipedia policies, rather than just opinion.
The merge meets WP:MERGE and WP:DUE criteria because:

The current article duplicates material in Bee.
The proposed standalone topic lacks sufficient independent coverage for WP:NOTABILITY. My longer note explains.
Integration will ensure scientific and editorial balance.
Leaving pesticides out of a discussion on bees is like leaving climate change out of a discussion on climate. The  title is radically the problem.
Please note - respectfully, decisions on content shouldn’t be negotiated between individual editors. 
Consensus on Wikipedia is based on applying policy and sources, not on reaching side agreements. Please see WP:CONSENSUS and WP:CANVASS for guidance, and I invite your engagement with the detailed discussion on policy grounds, on the talk page. Thank youAstral highway (talk) 16:46, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
Hi Dyanega I appreciate your detailed feedback, but I’d like to keep this discussion focused on content rather than on contributors. Comments about my intent or effort aren’t appropriate under WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA

I’ve done an extensive literature review, looked again at the whole history of the page from the beginning, including all substantial edits as well as 'precision' ones, and reached some further conclusions overnight and this morning.  I still propose merging this article into the main Bee article.
A summary of the current page problems after this second look -- 

chronic structural & conceptual flaws, including disproportionate focus on ethanol intoxication, perennial history of misuse of toxicological terminology and lack of coverage of key pesticide research.
Merging will resolve these issues by situating toxicology within a proper biological and ecological framework, ensuring scientific accuracy, editorial oversight & long-term sustainability.
(Full rationale below – click “show” to expand)

 — Astral highway (talk) 13:24, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
Summary for clarity: this update presents the full evidence base showing that synthetic insecticides are tens-to-hundreds of times more harmful to bees than natural compounds; the data confirm that Bees and toxic chemicals is not independently notable and will be merged into Bees unless new policy-based objections are raised.


### Summary
To help others evaluate the proposal, I researched the literature more deeply.  From it, I produced a comparative table of > 40 peer-reviewed studies (Guzman et al. 2024, Woodcock et al. 2016, Belsky & Joshi 2020,Motta et al. 2022, EFSA 2023; IPBES 2016; and others) to compare and assess synthetic vs. naturally occurring chemical stressors affecting bees.  
The dataset demonstrates that chemical exposure can't be divided into “toxic” and “natural” categories without misrepresenting scale and proportion.  


### Findings drawn directly from the table
Synthetic insecticides (neonicotinoids, pyrethroids) rank in the highest-risk tier by a wide margin, with field-scale evidence of navigation, reproduction and population-level effects.  
Fungicide–insecticide mixtures and in-hive acaricides follow, showing strong chronic or synergistic impacts.  
Herbicides such as glyphosate produce moderate effects, chiefly through microbiome or behavioural disruption.  
Naturally occurring plant and microbial toxins, like pyrrolizidine alkaloids, grayanotoxins, trigonelline, and ethanol from fermented nectar, are out there, but spatially and temporally narrow. Crucially, they're limited to specific floras or seasons.  
Some natural compounds, including caffeine, nicotine, and anabasine, are neutral and some are even beneficial at natural concentrations.  
Quantitatively, natural toxins score roughly ten to a hundred times lower in overall risk than synthetic insecticides and mixtures.  


### Interpretation
These data show how the dominant chemical risks to bees arise from synthetic compounds, with both synthetic and natural chemicals existing along a single biochemical continuum.  
By treating only anthropogenic substances as “toxic,” the current Bees and toxic chemicals article omits natural chemistry entirely and blots out the actual hierarchy of risk.  
This division gives disproportionate weight to one subset of chemical exposure and separates it from the ecological context in which all bee–chemical interactions occur.  


### Policy relevance
Under WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE, and WP:SUMMARYSTYLE, coverage should mirror the relative weight of evidence.  
Because the large-scale, quantifiable impacts are already summarised within the “Bee health” and “Threats and conservation” sections of the main article, maintaining a separate page on “toxic chemicals” misrepresents proportional risk and duplicates existing material.  


### Recommendation update
Merge Bees and toxic chemicals into Bees under “Threats and conservation,” retaining all verified data on synthetic chemical effects while integrating it with information on natural chemical exposures for completeness and neutrality.  
This will present a single, balanced overview consistent with Wikipedia’s content policies and current scientific consensus.  
Unless new evidence or policy-based objections are raised shortly, this summary can serve as the evidential basis for closing the merge discussion.  Astral highway (talk) 17:01, 18 October 2025 (UTC)


### Comparative table of chemical stressors (summary of evidence)
Relative-risk ranking: synthetic insecticides > fungicide/insecticide mixtures > in-hive acaricides > herbicides ≫ natural toxins ≫ microbial metabolites.  
Overall, naturally occurring toxins are tens-to-hundreds of times lower in measured or inferred risk than synthetic pesticides.Astral highway (talk) 17:01, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Outcome: No objections received. Merge proceeding. Merge into Bee. Astral highway (talk) 09:15, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
Astral highway, please don't just go ahead with merges when there isn't consensus for one. There already had been discussion addressing the merge idea earlier. I'm not seeing a clear reason for merging here that deals with the issues brought up prior. KoA (talk) 21:15, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
I made a clear presentation of the facts.  There wasn't a whisper of an answer.  I won't repeat the rationale for it here.Astral highway (talk) 23:51, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
We had already been discussing your merge idea in previous sections when you made this most recent one, and the idea of a merge did not get consensus. If the merge had been unopposed on this talk it would be a different story, but creating multiple sections does not mean the editors must then respond to the new section. Ultimately the proposed merge would need to be closed by someone uninvolved in order for the merge to go ahead at this point.
The other issue is that there isn't a clear rationale for merge proposal being made relevant to content. You certainly have opinions you've expressed, but there isn't really a WP:PAG focus, not to mention that this article is at Good Article status. Dyanega outlined issues both with the merge idea and just the overall challenges of this article's title where it's a challenge, but it's not something where we'd just charge ahead with a merge as was done either. It will take a bit more care to figure things out, but as other editors have said, it's best to work on the structure of this article rather than what you wanted to do. KoA (talk) 01:28, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
Contrary to what you assert up there, I do exactly have a WP:PAG focus. The lenses that I've noted as relevant are  WP:accuracy, WP:NPOV WP:TITLE WP:undue and WP:summarystyle.  I have already laid out what I see as significant inhibitors to trying to address this from the inside of the article to the outside, and that is why I have made a detailed assessment of it from the outside-in.  I'll repeat, I spent a long time going through every single edit in its history, so this comes from a long, hard look at the underlying problem, which hasn't just popped up out of nowhere.   I'm aware of @Dynanega's comment on the substance, thank you.
I'll repeat here, WP:NOTABILITY is the elephant in the room, and that is a structural problem that is mediated by  the very title. I've only heard commentary on my actions and a paraphrase of others' statements,,and nothing on your policy position. Makes it heard to fathom where you're actually coming from. 
What is your position on the issues, exactly?  Astral highway (talk) 09:18, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I already described the issues with the proposed merge in my earlier comments. If you want to go ahead with a merge, you need to get consensus first when editors have brought up issues with the idea. A merge just doesn't look like a good path at this point, but we're also a point now where you've made many edits, removals, and tags to a GA status article. As Dyanega alluded to, the article looks kind of rough right now, so some time is probably need to review recent edits before any additional major changes. KoA (talk) 20:47, 23 October 2025 (UTC)