>
> comment:
>
> These days we hear a lot about the "precautionary principle"
>

Peter- was this your comment or the paper's? In any case, it is an
excellent rebuttal of the Precautionary Principle.

For me, there has never been an issue with the fact that pesticides kill
bees when they are at certain levels. The problem is, in our experiments,
we add the ones we do not like to colonies and see that there are effects
at sub-lethal levels. But there is no way to extrapolate the findings to
what is actually happening in the real world.

I can add alcohol to a petri dish of cancer cells and show that alcohol
kills cancer.  It is an accurate statement as it stands, but obviously
false when used to kill cancer in humans.

The key has always been to show a direct link of nics in the field and any
kind of major impact on bees. What generally is discovered is that they are
not found in most colonies and when found, are dwarfed by the pesticides
that we put in the colonies. With those kinds of variables, it is difficult
to implicate nics.

Which is what the study says. Nics are not the cause of our dwindling bees
population (it is actually dwindling beekeeper population). We have enough
other things on the bees plate that they are a nuisance, but not the
problem..

Maybe, some day, when we get Varroa, nosema, virus, starvation, Tracheal
mites, other pesticides, foulbrood....... under control, we will see the
impact of the nics.

But we best get it done before the world ends this December.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

             ***********************************************
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