"... significant detrimental short and
 long-term impacts on colony performance and queen fate
 suggest that neonicotinoids may contribute to colony
 weakening in a complex manner. Further, we highlight the
 importance of the genetic basis of neonicotinoid
 susceptibility in honeybees which can vary substantially."

 
Interesting study, Ghaslain. I have a couple of thoughts, and await the comments of some of the scientists in this group:

I found it interesting that the queens raised in an agriculture-intensive region performed better under this neonic-induced stress than those from a more sheltered background. Is this just  a hardier strain of bees, or are we making an argument for local queens? (If you live in an ag area, raise your queens in an ag area.)

“Our target concentrations were 5.0 and 2.0 ppb for thiamethoxam and clothianidin, respectively.” There’s been a lot of discussion in this group about what constitutes a “field-relevant dose”, and I don’t know how this study’s doses compare to those of others. Personally, I would have liked to have seen this study performed in an ag-intensive area, with an additional control group just allowed to collect their own pollen. That might have given us some idea of whether the study’s “field-relevant” doses were, in fact, field-relevant.

Eugene Makovec
Missouri USA

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