> Me thinks that too many are trying to pin the tail on the wrong donkey.

Think about it.

I doubt that any thinking person can reasonably question that imidacloprid 
routinely kills some bees and weakens others somewhere in the world at any 
given time.  That seems very obvious.

The real questions are how many, how often, where, if the proportion and 
number are significant and/or economically meaningful or not -- and the big 
question is whether current methods of examining the issue are adequate and 
capable of getting an adequate picture of the phenomena associated wit this 
bug killer and its behaviour in the wild.

There is always a problem proving a negative, especially when common sense 
says that there must be circumstances where a known powerful, targeted 
poison is loose in the environment unsupervised and can achieve unintended 
concentrations in unexpected ways, *and* can possibly act synergistically 
with some unknown number of the multitude of natural and man-made chemicals 
and organisms with which it comes in contact.

Examining studies and experiences, and yes, even opinions is important. 
Unfortunately each of these is necessarily incomplete and limited in 
underlying data,, scope and concept, so we keep kicking the ball around, 
looking for something that has been overlooked and trying to decide how to 
weight the various factors.

There is much we do not know and probably much we cannot know.

No reason to give up. 

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned 
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html