Fungicide consumption exacerbates the negative effects of a common gut parasite in bumble bee

Bumble bees face numerous environmental stressors, including gut-parasite infection and exposure to agricultural fungicides, which can negatively impact colony health. This study evaluates the interactive effects of these stressors on bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) microcolonies, focusing on colony development, worker survival, and parasite infection dynamics. Our aim in evaluating these interactions was to determine if bees would experience synergistic negative health outcomes compared to single stressor exposures. We reared forty queenless bumble bee microcolonies, and treated them with either fungicide-contaminated pollen, inoculation with a gut parasite, both, or neither. Contrary to original expectations, we did not observe significant synergistic interactions between the two stressors, however we found that consumption of fungicide was associated with higher likelihood of gut-parasite infection, and delayed recovery from infection. Fungicide consumption was also connected to smalle..., We established 40 queenless microcolonies of B. impatiens workers between June 9th and July 17th of 2022, and treated them with either fungicide-contaminated pollen, gut parasite inefction, both, or neither. Each microcolony consisted of 5 callow female workers.
To evaluate the effects of fungicide consumption and parasite infection, alone and in combination, on bumble bee microcolony growth and individual health, we established the following treatments. Starting 48 h after establishment, we fed half of our microcolonies (N = 20) 1 g pollen patties containing 15,000 ppb of the commercial fungicide Pristine® while the remaining microcolonies (N = 20) continued to receive untreated pollen. These pollen patties were replaced every 48 h, and we calculated pollen consumption following Runnion et al. (2024). Fourteen days after the establishment of each microcolony, we removed each worker from their microcolony and starved them for 1 h. We then randomly selected one worker from half of the fu..., , # Fungicide consumption exacerbates the negative effects of a common gut parasite in bumble bee

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6hdr7srbc](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6hdr7srbc)

## Description of the data and file structure

This data set inlcudes files for analysis for brood production of bumble bee micrcolonies, worker health, pollen consumption, and detection of* Crithidia bombi* cells found in bumble bee frass collected from workers in microcolonies. 

File adl.csv contains data used for measuring average infection levels on a per bee basis. 

File brood.csv contains data used for analyzing brood production on a per micrcolony basis.

File drones.csv contains data used for analyzing health metrics of male bees emerged within each treatment microcolony on a per-male basis.

File pollen.dates.csc contains data used to analyze pollen consumption within each treatment micrcolony on a per-pollen ball basis. 

File qpcr.csv contains data used to anlyze infection levels on a per-bee-per...,