Scientists with the USDA’s Bee Research Laboratory and the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine are looking into whether the same industrial chemicals blamed for sickening and killing thousands of pets could be harming the honeybee population as well.

“I was curious enough and wanted to be complete enough that I thought it was worth doing,” Jeffery Pettis, the bee lab’s research leader, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on Thursday.

The Bee Research Laboratory is conducting more than 20 cage studies, each with about 20 bees, feeding them exclusive diets of various commercially made bee feeds manufactured over the past few years to see the effects, he said. Because the information is considered proprietary, officials do not know all the ingredients…

If any feed is contaminated with melamine or related compounds, Pettis said, “I have no idea how it would act on the bees.”

No link has been found, the scientists emphasize. Ten days into the 3-week testing period, it’s reported that all the bees are still alive.

For more information, see the original news story: Bee feed tested for pet food taints by Karen Roebuck, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 18/05/2007.