It came to me that the neonics are treated as if they are the only
pesticide on the planet. It is almost that when we get rid of them all will
be well again and bees of every type will be safe again because the neonics
are killing bees everywhere and are extremely toxic (from a recent post) to
bees.

I realize there is little corporate memory of how it really was in the past
because so many are new to beekeeping and all they have heard is the
neonics kill bees.

Back in the day,  Dave Green of pollinator.com would post here often about
the latest pesticide bee kill. And they were rampant. Many of us were
around for penncap-m which did kill bees outright, instead of getting them
a bit confused like Imidacloprid, the poster child for the neonics.

My concern, and Randy has also voiced it, is what replaces them? The second
concern I have is that when the neonics disappear, so will any concern for
the bees welfare and pesticides.The problem has been solved.

What is needed, and good luck in getting it, is a side-by-side comparison
of all the replacements with the original neonic they replace. It won't
happen because that would destroy the narrative.

It was done about three or more years ago with five pesticides used on
almonds and four, including the neonic, induced the same symptoms in bees
that the neonics are chastised for as being the only pesticide that causes
it. They are not.We just do not test all other pesticides the way the
neonics have been tested. Others just get the LD50 treatment while the
neonics get the "sublethal", which is everything from LD100 to no kills but
something happened. The money train will have left the station and the
trial money chasers will have gone on to the new fad.

What is ironic is that after the EU ban it will be impossible to determine
if there is any difference in bee mortality, as was shown in recent trials,
because the only big killer around is not the neonics but Varroa.Everything
else gets lost in the noise.

The truth is, the real losers in all this will be the EU farmers, becasue
the neonics were specifically designed to be lethal to insects and fairly
benign to humans.That is the real crime.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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