Re "Exposure of native bees foraging in an agricultural landscape
tocurrent-use pesticides"

Unfortunately, this paper isn't yet open access.  It was a well-done survey
by Michelle Hladik, who appears to have gone from U.C. Riverside to the
Sacramento USGS (she worked with John Trumble at Riverside, and found toxic
selenium concentrations in plants in the San Joaquin Valley).

I'm glad to see USGS continuing these sorts of surveys.  We have a weird
system in which EPA, USGS, USFWS, USDA, etc all do their own things with
regard to pesticides and pollinator protection.

The study found a surprising amount of pesticide residues, esp. neonics, in
native bees collected from grasslands, which are commonly considered as
pollinator reserves.  Clearly, too many pesticides are drifting off of ag
land and onto other lands.

The authors also point out a serious problem with quantifying pesticide
exposure to pollinators via trapping of them: "It is also important to note
that only bees with sub-lethal concentrations of pesticides were available
to sample because lethal concentrations would, by definition, remove those
bees from the pool of available samples."

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

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