I'm finding the press releases re both of the anti-neonic papers in Science
to have exaggerated the significance of their actual findings.

For example, I was concerned about Tsvetkov's claim that "Realistic
experiments showed that neonicotinoids...were associated with...increased
queenlessness over time."  This would be a BIG DEAL.

I hope that the pasted graphic of her Fig.  2D shows below.  The
experiment,  which among other things, tracked the presence of a laying
queen in 4 treated and 5 untreated control colonies over 90 days.  In the
treated group, there were zero laying queens on Day 80, but one was laying
again by Day 90.  But they did not check to see how many of the treated
colonies had laying queens after Day 90.  This amount of queen failure was
of concern.

But then we need to look at the control group.  On Day 50, only one of the
controls contained a laying queen, and only 3 colonies replaced their queen
afterward.  Fischer's Exact Test finds that the difference between the
groups would be expected to occur 50% of the time--in other words, no claim
increased queen failure could be made.  It's unfortunate that a prestigious
journal could publish a study with such clear errors.


-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com



-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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