">What is the effect on, for example, swallows, when they eat thousands of small insects (including honeybees) that have had a sub-lethal dose?"

So far today, just like every other day, I have eaten quite a number of chemicals in sub lethal doses.  I also took a med this morning prescribed by my doctor that amounted to a couple of % or so of a lethal dose.  I will take another shot of that med this evening just like every other day.  Of course my own body made sub lethal amounts of the poisons acetone and methyl ethyl ketone today just like it does every day.  Tonight I intend to drink over 10% of a lethal dose of alcohol just like I do many nights.  I also anticipate I will drink over 10% of a lethal dose of water today.  In fact, failure to consume sub lethal amounts of a whole variety of different things will result in an agonizingly painful death.  More painful than the death suffered from consuming a lethal dose of the same things.

My point is quite simple.  Consuming a sub lethal amount of some chemical may, or may not cause harm to the consumer.  There is no reason at all to leap to the totally unfounded general conclusion that some small part of a lethal dose of anything is a problem.  Nor is it valid to leap to the totally unfounded general conclusion it is not a problem.  That said I find it a huge leap to even consider that those swallows might be suffering the slightest risk based on what is well known and public information about neonics.

Dick
" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

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