I apologize for posting erratically--I'm needing to do so from airport
lobbies between flights (reading papers while in the air).

Re the Woodcock study, it is interesting to see the colony strengths PRIOR
TO EXPOSURE to the neonics.  In the UK groups, they mostly ranged from 1025
to 2500 adult bees.  There are roughly 2000-2500 adult bees on a single
covered Langstroth frame, yet the authors considered these less-than-single
frame strength colonies to be suitable for collecting experimental data
from which they could derive conclusions.  This observation reminds me of
the maxim, "garbage in, garbage out."

I run a number of controlled field trials, and would not consider
collecting data until I had test colonies of seasonally-robust and od
roughly equal strengths.

I hate to belabor the point on anti-neonic "studies," but I suggest that
all read an excellent recent article in Bee World by Drs. Sponsler and
Johnson--two bee/pesticide experts that could hardly be dismissed as
defenders of neonics.  It's entitled "Poisoning a Society: A Superorganism
Perspective on Honey Bee Toxicology" (unfortunately paywalled).  Here's a
relevant snip:

"As studies involving neonicotinoids and honey bees
have accumulated, a frustrating trend
has emerged. On the one hand, labora-
tory studies clearly document a range of
lethal and sublethal effects of neonicoti-
noid exposure on individual honey bees.
Field studies, however, consistently fail to
detect effects on colony-level outcomes
(survival, growth, honey production or detect them only at
relatively high levels of exposure that
probably exceed those typically encoun-
tered by foraging bees. Some of this dissonance might
be attributable to flaws in experimental
methods or statistical design, but there is compelling
evidence that the apparent resilience of
honey bee colonies is rooted in a funda-
mental biological phenomenon known as
“superorganism resilience”: the ability of
a colony to sustain the loss or impairment
of individuals, much as a multicellular
organism can sustain damage to individ-
ual cells, without compromising its overall
health."

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

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