Hello Bob & All, Bob's reply to my post raised one science issue that I didn't cover previously. >Can you assure beekeepers that Midwest farmers planting imidacloprid- treated seed year after year in the same field without rotation are not raising the risk levels as to the concentrations of the neonicotinoids in the plant? Very good question and one that has been extensively researched. It is discussed in the two review papers I cited in my last post: Schmuck et al. 2001 (Pest Manag Sci 57:225-238) and Maus et al. 2003 (Bulletin of Insectology 56:51-58). Some residues can remain in the soil beyond harvest and may be present when a succeeding crop is planted. But here's the key thing to keep in mind. Most of this residue is not bioavailable to plants because it becomes tightly bound to soil particles. A chemist in a laboratory can extract it from a soil sample using a hot methanol wash, but you can't get much of it out with water which is of course the solvent used by plants to "extract" nutrients from the soil. The bottom line is the residues in plants won't be appreciably greater after 7 or even 70 years of continuous use than they were the first year. I'm not going to engage in an iterative point-counterpoint debate of the non-science issues. My intent in posting here is to provide information that otherwise hasn't been brought out. BEE-L readers can read the referenced documents for themselves and make up their own minds. Best regards, Dave Fischer **************************************************** * General Information About BEE-L is available at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/default.htm * ****************************************************