A Mr Linder question..

What do you mean by this  E.T.??  not quite understanding your thinking??

my comments..

there are several recent articles (threads/links) here on Bee-L concerning the level of this product in bees, the bee's food and the bee's general environment.  part per billion is something hard for a person like myself to comprehend but various links suggest first concentration of 4 ppb and then 86 ppb and then in this latest article where the authors declares the measured direct exposure as being greater than they expected.  I am not certain what 'tolerance limit' that honey bees can withstand but the first number might make you yawn, certainly the second should make you take notice and the last should make you wonder it 'this problem' (if it is a problem???) is not also much larger than many of us expected.  

as a tangent to this steam of information Randy Oliver in trying to explain the 'limitation' of one of the studies at least suggest that time of exposure to neonics in that study was longer than the article itself suggested.  I have always assumed* that honeybees can deal with a certain level of contamination over some limited time period.  I would however guess that the longer the time of exposure the more problems a hive is likely to experience since at some point the decontamination capacity of the hive will become compromised.  'IF' the food resources (either sugars or amino acid levels in available pollen) is also marginal** then quite likely survival/reproductive problems for the hive are also likely to occur sooner rather than later.  simple (one variable) problems are normally easy to figure out but the more complexity involves (the more variable included as part of the problem) the more difficult it is to come to a solution to the problem.  if the problem was one variable/dimensional then I suspect we would already have a definitive answer to the problem.

at this point in time casually (in my OPINION) the problem appear to me to be one of extend (and perhaps constant) exposure to neonics (and perhaps a long list of other contaminates) plus compromised food resources (quantity or quality).

*Assume... this word always seems to raise some eyebrows on some forms... since much of my academic background was in economics and finance I commonly use this word as it is used in these two studies but should be interpreted to mean 'with the best available information at this point in time'.

**although I thinks some one here has suggested otherwise marginal level of food resources (quality or quality) in an area will directly impact the quality of queens produced in queen rearing operation either thru greater numbers of drone laying queens or early queen superscedure < one is easy to witness in baby nuc type mating boxes and the latter often occurs some short time span after the mated queen has been established in a nuc, hive or package of bees. 

 

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