Ciao Massimiliano

I wonder - is this valuable new information, or is it just adding more confusion?

Guttation is fluid from the xylem, and is mostly water.  No sugar to attract bees, but if you offer it in a droplet (as they did in the video) to thirsty bees they will drink.  What about in the fields - will bees collect it?  Reasons for thinking that normally they will not:

- guttation is usually there only at times of high humidity when other surfaces may be damp and usually occurs early in the day.  Are bees flying and collecting water then?  Will they climb up short maize seedlings to collect water?  Would they not prefer other places?

- their need for water is low once spring is underway.  The spring flowers are out and provide nectar, and the heat of the summer has not yet started. 

Babelfish brought out this from the article:

The Professor To. Tapparo, of the Department of Sciences Chemistries of the University of Padova, has analyzed the produced water drops from plants of it of maize with the guttazione, recovering the presence of neonicotinoidi in reason of a ten of milligrammi for liter (, has understood well! The used measure is expressed in milligrammi/liter that is ppm - parts per million when it is well-known that the lethal dose for the bee measure in little, infinitesimali ones, ppb - parts for trillion)

It is *not* the case that it well-known that the lethal dose is below 1 ppb and this just adds to the feeling that this is far from an unbiased piece of work. So is Prof Tapparo just indulging in scare stories, or does he have good evidence that bees might collect guttation?  Has anyone out there seen bees collecting water from maize (sorry, corn ...) seedlings?

all the best

Gavin

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