--- title: Honey Bees Are Contaminated With Pesticides, Study Says description: About three-fourths of honey from around the world contains some pesticides, according to a study published in Science Friday canonical: https://time.com/4973279/honey-pesticides-bees/ author: Mahita Gajanan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-10-06T22:37:19.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T17:46:32.918Z article:section: Health og:title: There Could Be Pesticides in Your Honey og:description: About three-fourths of honey from around the world contains some pesticides og:url: https://time.com/4973279/honey-pesticides-bees/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte9d2f15f9d044af7/6988e0f3ab6d7707676b01da/honey-bees-insecticide.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 7087 og:image:height: 3986 og:image:alt: Honey Bee in Flight og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: There Could Be Pesticides in Your Honey twitter:description: About three-fourths of honey from around the world contains some pesticides twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte9d2f15f9d044af7/6988e0f3ab6d7707676b01da/honey-bees-insecticide.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # There Could Be Pesticides in Your Honey > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. by [Mahita Gajanan](https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/) ## Mahita Gajanan Gajanan is an editor at TIME. Oct 6, 2017 10:37 PM UTC  Honey Bee collecting pollen at a white flower Honey Bee collecting pollen at a white flower Kees Smans—Getty Images by [Mahita Gajanan](https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/) ## Mahita Gajanan Gajanan is an editor at TIME. Oct 6, 2017 10:37 PM UTC About three-fourths of honey from around the world contains some pesticides, according to a [study published in _Science_](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6359/109) Friday. The study found that 75% of honey samples collected from nearly 200 sites across the globe contained at least one of five kinds of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Researchers tested 198 samples of honey from every continent, excluding Antarctica, and found that 45% of the samples contained two or more of the compounds that make up the pesticide and that 10% had at least four or five compounds. “Our results confirm the exposure of bees to neonicotinoids in their food throughout the world,” researchers wrote. “The coexistence of neonicotinoids and other pesticides may increase harm to pollinators.” Previous studies have found that neonicotinoids, which are a common type of insecticide, can impair the [brain function of bees](http://time.com/4885569/honeybee-population-increase/) and slow down the growth of their colonies. The recent findings in _Science_ suggest that bees throughout the world are exposed to neonicotinoids at a massive scale. Of the honey sampled, North America had the highest proportion of samples that had neonicotinoids at 86%, followed by Asia at 80% and Europe at 79%. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4973279/honey-pesticides-bees/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4973279/honey-pesticides-bees/"},"headline":"There Could Be Pesticides in Your Honey","datePublished":"2017-10-06T22:37:19.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T17:46:32.918Z","description":"About three-fourths of honey from around the world contains some pesticides","url":"https://time.com/4973279/honey-pesticides-bees/","keywords":["Food","health","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte9d2f15f9d044af7/6988e0f3ab6d7707676b01da/honey-bees-insecticide.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mahita Gajanan","jobTitle":"Gajanan is an editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte9d2f15f9d044af7/6988e0f3ab6d7707676b01da/honey-bees-insecticide.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Honey Bee in Flight","caption":"Honey Bee in Flight","creditText":"Kees Smans—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/food/","name":"Food"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4973279/honey-pesticides-bees/","name":"There Could Be Pesticides in Your Honey"}}]}] ```