High fertiliser use halves numbers of pollinators, world’s longest study finds

A honeybee on a hawkbit flower. The study is the first to show that an increase in fertiliser use leads to a fall in pollinator numbers, affecting bees in particular. Photograph: Kay Roxby/Alamy

Using high levels of common fertilisers on grassland halves pollinator numbers and drastically reduces the number of flowers, research from the world’s longest-running ecological experiment has found.

Increasing the amount of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus doused on agricultural grassland reduced flower numbers fivefold and halved the number of pollinating insects, according to the paper by the University of Sussex and Rothamsted Research.