Whatever Mike Rossander thinks, ‘The Independent’ could only be described as “a rag” by someone who had never read it.
That said, Dr Julian Little the spokesman for Bayer CropScience UK, is quoted… "It makes it impossible to look at their methods, it makes it impossible to check whether you can repeat the work, you don't know where they got the imidacloprid from, you don't know how they gave that to the bees,"……..
This is not an anodyne remark. For the last couple of years now, Bayer have refused to supply samples of imidacloprid to the French National research establishments INRA, Institut Scientifique de Recherche Agronomique, and to laboratories capable doing analysis of pollen and samples of bees. Consequently my local association, Syndicat d'Apiculture du Rhône et de la Région Lyonnaise which has 575 members of whom over 200 are professional, has dozens of samples in cold storage in the hope that one day they might be analysed. 
Finally the statement,  “However Dr Julian Little of pesticide manufacturer Bayer CropScience, said pesticides are not approved unless it is found they have no effects on insects like bees.”, is nonsense as Bayer and other manufacturers are the only ones supplying evidence to our ANSES, the body giving approval to medicines and other potentially dangerous substances. They are in the middle of a scandal concerning SERVIER, the biggest pharmaceutical company in France, who withheld information concerning one of their drugs and, it is suggested, produced false information to get approval for the drug, Mediator, said to be responsible for between 500 and 2000 deaths. If it can be done for a dangerous drug it can be done for other dangerous substances.

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