Peter Detchon

> That to me does not accord with the view you have ascribed to him.

Perhaps I was a little too succinct; my apologies.

Yes, Dr Cresswell gave us the information that a sublethal effect of 
neonicotinoids is that performance is negatively affected by 6-20%. 
However, I was referring to a statement about the synergistic effects of 
nosema ceranae + neonicotinoids which has been widely touted as the cause of 
CCD (along with just about everything else on this planet and beyond).

To summarise:  there is a sublethal performance reduction from 
neonicotinoids alone, but synergistic effects of nosema ceranae and 
neonicotinoids are not noticeable with less than ~70x the field realistic 
dose of the neonicotinoid.

Of course, that does not mean than there is no effect which, presumably, 
could be amplified by yet other factors.   This for me illustrates the 
problem that we have in deciding where problems lie: it is clearly 
impossible to test every possible combination of disease, agrochemicals, 
weather conditions, forage etc, across the whole range.  We know that 
neonicotinoids are not good for bees, but showing what impact they have 
beyond the 6-20% performance hit might be so dependent on combinations of 
other factors that we will never be able to get a definitive answer.

Best wishes

Peter
52.194546, -1.673618 

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