> Stan, it's a 6+ month old residue that may no longer have
> lethal or sublethal insecticidal activity.  So I'd like to see
> the Penn State researchers demostrate this highly aged 
> 1,450 ppb insecticide residue in the nectaries is capable 
> of killing or harming pollinators in an actual real world field
> situation (not in some artificial lab situation where captive
> pollinators are forced to consume it). 

Paul, they measured imidacloprid and the first two metabolites
that it degrades into (one of which has higher toxicity than the
parent molecule).   Bayer has never said that storing the
compound degrades its effectiveness.  Nor does it seem to have
affected its ability to kill hemlock wooly adelgid for "six to seven
years" according to the Kentucky entomologist's brief.

What Bayer *HAS* claimed is that when high soil residues have
been found in years after usage, say by soil injection, that these
amounts although detectable by chemical analysis of the soil are 
not the amounts that are available to plants, because, they claim,
the material is bound to particles of organic matter in some way
that makes it unavailable to plants.   I have never been terribly
convinced by this and the posting about hemlock wooly adelgid,
and the paper I referenced about multiyear control in another
forestry application seem not to support this claim.

But in this instance if it is in the nectary of the flower, there is
not much question of "whether" the plant can take it up.

Stan

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