>Meanwhile, some scholarly journals, such as Animal Behaviour, have begun to raise their level of scrutiny over invertebrate welfare.<

Nothing new here.  These questions were bouncing around in the Behavioral Societies ~20 years ago.  At a National Meeting hosted by UM this was a hot topic.  One person even argued that any visible or measurable 'response' could be stressful, going so far as to postulate that maybe one shouldn't do experiments with protein responses or observing directed movements of microbes on a microscope slide!  I remember others wondered whether it was ethical to study octopus responses to sudden movement or color changes to avoid predators.

No one tried to justify ripping wings off of live flies. 

Some of us who conduct pesticide/pollution/chem-bio warfare agent research don't like having to kill bees, but at times, we've no real choice.   We just don't have adequate models to reliably predict outcomes, establish LD and LC levels.  We may be able to do a bit better for RT values for field-weathered products.

The real change will come when institutions add insects to list of animals subject to Institutional Review of experiments and protocols.  My guess, none want to add this unless public pressure forces it on them.  

Still, its hard to make a case for insect like Drosophila and even Honey Bees when everyone from backyard beekeepers to large-scale growers of fruits, vegetables, cereals wage war on 'pest' insects using pesticides.  It remind me of the silliness of laws such as discussed in CA that would disallow insect collections, when farmers spray and spray and spray again.   Also, even 40 years ago, my mentors who assigned us as students to collect plants and insects for reference collections also distributed a list of plants and animals that were uncommon in the local area.   I remember that in Bozeman we couldn't collect Trillium, whereas it was common in other parts of the state.

All of which begs the original questions asked in reference to writing an article for a bee magazine.  The honey bee is an introduced species.  Should we do like Adriann Wenner on Catalina Island; try to remove them from N. America?  Jerry

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