"No, you misunderstand me." 


 Noted,  and My apologies,  it was intended in general,  not you
specifically.

You mentioned the alternative,  and good relationships with the sprayers
helping.  It's a novel idea and may work in your area,  but not in AG areas
in general.   Let me explain why.

Right now Pioneer (Just using them as an example there are others) applies a
know dosage of neonics to the seed.  The have a finical incentive to get the
dosage right.  Tons of money lost if they over dose,  customers lost if they
under dose.   That's capitalism at work.  And very talented engineers
working on just the right balance.
Take that away,  and now you have we will say somewhere in the neighbor hood
if 1.5 million (pioneer seed customers) individuals trying to decide just
what is the right amount of pesticide to apply post emergence.  On top of
that you have about 20k pesticide salesmen pushing the idea that More is
safer than less...  
Now once they start spraying you also have to assume that they spray
EVERTHING  ditches fenerows and waterways.  Including all the great
chickweed and yellow rocket that's growing and BLOOMING while the corn is
sprouting.   Stuff that was pretty safe for bees 10 minutes ago is now
totally toxic.


Our real culprit and issue her in the Midwest with spraying is the pesticide
salesmen pushing proactive treatments for things like leafhoppers and
thrips.  They want to sell a proactive treatment for beans during bloom.
And with high prices many guys are doing 1 at least with some doing as many
as 3 random sprays  "just in case"  Those are a huge issue here.  

I sit and talk to my farmers a lot....  probably the equal of 1 day a year
with each of them.....some of them are huge,  a cpl in the 10k acerages,
and several are small 1500 or so.  Listen closely....

There all great guys,  but when it comes to how much pesticide is right,
that guy at the seed plant is a lot more accurate.


That said.  All the data I see shows that WE are still by far the biggest
problems to bees.  And by we.  I mean beekeepers.


Charles

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