bathbeekeeper said;
Why only test Imidaclorpid? Do other pesticides do the same thing at the
same low concentrations?
As I recall, apistan and cumophose also compromised the bees immune systems
I would guess that there are a load of things that bees bring into the
colony that "compromise" their immune systems, especially after reading the
stuff that Jerry uncovered when he was bomb sniffing for DARPA.
We've found over 220 non-pesticide chemicals in beehives that may be toxic
and its reasonable to expect some of these also affect immune systems. I
spent 30 years looking at environmental pollutants in beehives - those from
gasoline and diesel included.
I also did a lot of work on low level, chronic exposure issues, sorting
through many end points for DoD. Frankly, lots of things affect bees at low
levels - but many of the effects are transitory - just like people get
drunk, so do bees. And just like us, most recover. Some of us get colds and
sometimes pneumonia, others never have either. Bee colonies also vary.
HOWEVER, as a reviewer, I would generally reject any paper showing a
sublethal impact of A pesticide, if the study lacks a positive control. When
looking at an effect such as an increase of Nosema, one needs to have a blank
control - NO added stress, the pesticide treatment(s), AND a third set of
bees with a non-pesticide stressor (this is where the researcher has to be
innovative, but one should be looking for a stress factor such as extra
handling of the bees, nutrition, cold, etc). The point is that many thing
compromise immune systems and resistance to pathogens, pests, etc. At the
low levels of pesticide being tested, one has to determine whether the effect
observed is unique to the chemical or simply a general stress response.
In many of the supposed low level pesticide lab trials that I've seen, the
control is simply bees in cages left alone (unhandled). The pesticide
treated bees are often picked up and feed, or put to sleep and topically
challenged (a drop of the chemical applied). In both cases, these an added
stress that the controls are NOT subjected to. When Larry Atkins was still
alive, he and I both had long discussions about the short cuts being taken
by many investigators which often had as great or greater effect than the
chemical itself.
And no, I did not see nor review the Pettis paper.
Jerry
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