Randy wrote:

> I have gotten surprisingly little feedback about the proposed study.

 

 

Randy, I submitted your project to Janine Kievits, a Belgian expert who
follows these matters with the European Community. 

This is his answer:

 

“In fact, in your protocol, there is a difference from the real situation:
the pollen will be contaminated from the outside and not the inside. This
causes a difference in how the bee is exposed: it will be in contact with
the contaminant as it will fetch the pollen, whereas when it collects pollen
from the treated field, I believe the contaminant found inside the grains of
pollen, the bee is not in contact with the contaminant at the time it takes
for the pollen to be stored, but at the moment of feeding. This is a logical
assumption, but I have no confirmation, except that Jean-Marc Bonmatin(*),
Research Fellow at CNRS/France, in his presentations always insists on the
need to grind the grain to remove the contaminant – he says between other
things that it is not possible to validate the analytical protocols by
measuring the rate of recovery from a pollen contamination from outside
because it is not the same thing to recover the contaminant from a
contaminated pollen per system.

I also doubt if the amount of pollen (one pound) is sufficient for a colony
in the winter? It would also be necessary to monitor the quantities of
pollen already present in the colonies before starting the test. Not
possible to completely deprive the colony of pollen without coming in
situations with cannibalism which completely weaken the hive before the
test, potentially distorting the results thereof.
Definitely not easy to mount such tests! I really wonder for quite some time
if néonics really are assessable ... However I can’t in all cases, the time
it is, imagine a battery of tests such that they give completely reliable
results to identify properly the risks of these molecules for our bees!”

 

 

Kind regards,

 

Ghislain De Roeck,

Belgium.

 

See: http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/20083103467.html (Bees and systemic
insecticides (imidacloprid, fipronil) in pollen: subnano-quantification by
HPLC/MS/MS and GC/MS).

 


             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm