>>> Yet there is only circumstantial or flawed experimental 
>>> evidence of harm to bees by neonics.

That statement is simply and flatly false.  A mere perusal of the Bee-L
archives themselves will show that neonics certainly DO harm bees, and
excellent studies have been done to document this harm.  One clear example
is the "corn-planting dust" issue as published by Greg Hunt of Perdue, which
the USDA, the pesticide manufacturers, and the seed-drill makers are still
addressing.  There are a number of other such examples.

The issue clearly is not "is harm done", but "is the harm done worse than
the alternatives at hand"?

>> Sorry to be distrusting, but I do not know this gentleman. 

I do, as I travel enough to have seen the man on airport crown-room lounges
on west-coast TV feeds from California often.  He is a professional shill
for hire, a man who misrepresents facts for a living.   The sad truth is
that one can make very good money as a shill.  Here's a decent summary of
his recent activities:

http://www.alternet.org/food/meet-man-monsanto-and-friends-hired-lie-you-abo
ut-your-food
http://tinyurl.com/9sfgbkz

Further, the article quoted is from the Wall Street Journal.  This is NOT a
point in the article's favor:
(Paywalled link):

http://online.wsj.com/articles/henry-i-miller-why-the-buzz-about-a-bee-pocal
ypse-is-a-honey-trap-1406071612
http://tinyurl.com/nxcln8j

I no longer read the WSJ.  It has been turned into the printed-on-dead-trees
version of Fox News since Rupert Murdoch bought the paper.  One cannot take
anything seriously from a newspaper with an editorial policy that even
denies human-driven climate change:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/02/crapification-of-wsj/
http://tinyurl.com/7b27rxm

It used to be that the WSJ was "all business", without any slant at all.  I
used to joke that if the end of the world was announced, that the WSJ would
report it in a 3-sentence brief in the famous "center column" news summary,
and refer the reader to a 14-page story in Section 2 on the impact of the
impending end of the world on soybean futures.  Since its purchase by
NewsCorp, the paper has become so politicized, that even the financial
reporting is skewed by Murdoch's politics:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/01/wsj-jumps-the-shark/
http://tinyurl.com/ydbpsyf

So, to summarize, we have:

a)  a known shill-for-hire on food issues
b)  published in a newspaper that has gone down the rabbit hole of partisan
politics (or is it a "FOX hole"?)
c)   posted and endorsed here by a beekeeper who implies academic
affiliation, but without listing any credentials. 

The dangers of neglecting one's due diligence, at least googling an author
name before posting to Bee-L, are thereby illustrated.

Note: Murdoch bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005, and sold it for $35
million in 2012 after driving it into a ditch.  He paid $5.5 billion for WSJ
and Dow Jones, in 2007. 18 months later, they wrote down the value of the
Journal and Dow Jones by $2.8 billion, after turning it into a mere shadow
of its former self.  His goal is not to make money, his goal is to spend
money to achieve other goals.  Invest at your own peril, as he wants to
spend YOUR money to achieve his political goals.

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