INTRODUCTION Honey bees are vegetarians, usually consuming only nectar and pollen from plant blossoms or sweets like sugar syrup and honey dew (Atkin and Anderson. 1976 (1970)). These insects are highly social and a colony may contain as many as 10,000 to 100,000 individuals, depending on the time of year, prevailing weather conditions and availability of nectar and pollen sources (Robinson, 1979; Proctor et al., 1996). Honey bees provide not only the income sources for beekeepers but also pollination services for crop production (Degrandi-Hoffman, 1978; NRCS, 2005; Jung, 2008; Jung, 2014). Amongst beneficial insects, honey bees are considered as the most efficient and reliable pollinators of various agricultural crops (McGregor, 1976). Recently increased concerns on honey bee population decline have wide spread not only within Korea but over the world (Jung, 2014). There are several factors contributing to the decline of honey bees as well as the pollination services (Goulson et al., 2015), but considered as the combined stresses from parasites, pesticides and lack of foraging sources. Habitat destruction, including nesting and mating sites, and alternative forage, is the main issue in the decline of pollinators (Batra, 1995). Bee poisonings from diverse chemicals especially of insecticides are another important source of honeybee population decline Avoidance Behavior of Honey bee, Apis mellifera from Commonly used Fungicides, Acaricides and Insecticides in Apple Orchards Moonsu Kang 1 and Chuleui Jung 2,3 * 1 Korea Plants Environmental Research Station, Suwon, Republic of Korea 2 Agriculture Science and Technology Research Institute, Andong National University, Republic of Korea 3 Department of Plant Medicine, Andong National University, Republic of Korea (Received 27 October 2017; Revised 7 November 2017; Accepted 8 November 2017) 295 Avoidance behavior is an important life history strategy to survive hazardous environment. The experiment was conducted to detect the avoidance tendency of the honeybee Apis mellifera against commonly used pesticides in apple production. Choice test given only 50% sucrose solution and pesticide-mixed sucrose solution as food estimated the avoidance in laboratory. Most of the acaricides and fungicides tested were shown avoided. Among insecticides, honeybee showed strong avoidance to cyhexatine, carbosulfan and fenpyroximate but low to diflubenzuron, tebufenpyrad, and acrinathrin. Avoidance behavior to neonicotinoid insecticides showed bifurcated; highly avoided from thiacloprid, acetamiprid while less avoided from imidacloprid, thiamethoxam and dinotefuran. From the field study, abamectin, fenthion, amitraz and acequinocyl showed highly avoided while fungicide of fenarimol, acaricides of acrinathrin and phosphamidon, IGR insecticide of diflubenzuron, neonicotinoid insecticide of imidacloprid, and carbamate insecticide of carbaryl showed less avoidance in the field. These results partly explained high bee poisoning from carbaryl in apple flowering period, and neonicotinoids during season. Key words: Apis mellifera L., Avoidance tendency, Pesticide, Selection index Abstract ] ೠҴনࠉ೟ഥ૑ ӂ ഐ  Journal of Apiculture 32(4) : 295~302(2017) DOI: 10.17519/apiculture.2017.11.32.4.295 *Corresponding author. E-mail: cjung@andong.ac.kr Original Article