On 07/06/2012 9:01 AM, Adrian Duehl wrote:
>   As a group of people interested
> in the issue and distributed across the country you are ideally situated to
> carry out your own research project to figure out how pesticides affect
> your bees. Ten beekeepers each with two treated and two control hives could
> produce some excellent data about the effects of pesticide exposure in
> different locations.

I agree. What has become increasingly apparent here, the design of any 
experiment is the sticker.  That is our beef with the study under 
discussion.  It seems that a researcher with no idea about bees 
consulted beekeepers with no idea of science.

Jerry offered some very useful ideas and we have long been concerned 
about the tendency to make sweeping assumptions and to average in a way 
that might conceal effects on individual bees or overlook such things as 
increased variability in colony performance which might not be 
significant to a researcher, but which might be serious to a beekeeper.
This neglecting the obvious objection to assuming that a few localized 
and time-limited observations -- or lack of adverse observed happenings 
--are representative enough to be the basis of conclusions.  Obvious 
bias in reporting of episodes is emerging as a problem, too.

 > They could also address many of the problems with the
 > study like standardizing the estimation of hive strength and
 > management intensity. By coordinating with a researcher interested in
 > the results you could probably also get bee samples analyzed for
 > pesticides and help with the data if you needed assistance with
 > statistics and such.

I think this is a plan.  Do I detect some interest in designing and 
managing such a task?  Those interested would certainly need a leader. 
(We are a leaderless, disparate and occasionally fractious group. That 
is not a bad thing.  It is possibly our principal strength.)

I can't help but also detect some sympathy for the authors of that 
unfortunate paper, and noted the suggestion that the paper "has done an 
excellent job getting people in the beekeeping community thinking about 
how to accurately evaluate honeybee pesticide exposure, and consider the 
implications of that exposure."

I find that idea surprising considering that these questions have been 
in open discussion here for years, if not decades, and in bee meetings 
-- and it seems that Jerry to name only one has a handle on the problem. 
I could name more who I would have thought to have done deep thinking on 
the topic.  Perhaps not, or maybe it was again time to take a fresh look 
and debate the issue.  Maybe there is no way to "accurately evaluate 
honeybee pesticide exposure".  (Banish the thought.)

However, maybe it is true.  Maybe this did raise important issues, even 
if they were not the ones intended.  Sometimes a high profile screw up 
can lead to a total rethinking of a problem and if so, then what looks 
like a huge embarrassment may turn out for the best.

Interesting thoughts.  Thanks for the perspective.

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