Thanks for pointing out the article, Juanse.

You are correct that the site has its own bias. Entine's point that neonic
bans are bad science is correct, but he swings the pendulum too far the
other way: he thinks they're absolutely not the problem. In the New York
Times article he references, Adee talks about a real event that happened to
his bees, Adee's only mention of neonics. He doesn't blame them for CCD.
But Entine tries to make it look like the NYT author, Ms. Strom, is. She
says "some studies show that" neonics have bad effects, she's not making
the claims Entine thinks she is about CCD. And it's true that some studies
show neonics do have bad effects.

If we equate "CCD" with "continuing losses of 40%+" as Entine seems to be,
I think neonics and all chemicals in the environment must play a role in
bee declines. Yet, in the Reddit AMA Entine conducted (
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5i3dfr/science_ama_series_im_jon_
entine_executive/), he says "there is no known link between pesticides and
CCD." Besides recently published evidence on organosilicone adjuvants and
fungicides, there's recent evidence on neonics themselves:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23844170 -upregulates P450 gene in
larva in detoxifying
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091364
-impaired
navigation in adult bees
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24145453 -impaired immunity and
increased viral replication

The lead comment after the article sums it up nicely: "What is sad about
this (among other things) is that bees are not at all well served by
oversimplifying what is really a very complex issue."

Tim
eastern Washington

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