....I must admit that I find this article somewhat disturbing.
If it is true/accurate to say that Pettis and his team produced good evidence showing that undetectable amounts of imidacloprid in bees increases susceptability to nosema significantly over 2 years ago and that top bee researcher in the U.S. government (Pettis) has been waiting for publication in order to release such important information, then something is broken.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the need to "publish" (especially for those working at academic institutions)...but Jeff works for the USDA and has an immense responsibility to beekeepers (and tax payers) in the U.S., not to an academic institution.
2 years? How many discussions (on Bee-L, on other forums, and in discussions between beekeepers throughout the world) have been focused upon the possible effects of imidiacloprid and the fact that we see very few bees with measurable amounts of imidiacloprid? How many studies have been conceived, proposed, and funded in these intervening 2 years? How much more informed and aware could we (as beekeepers) have been over the last 2 years if Jeff wasn't sitting on this.
Speaking for myself, I've had countless discussions with beekeepers all over the world on this subject.....and guess what? If this article is accurate, then those that are hugging trees the hardest were right....imidiacloprid hurts bees even at undetectable levels....making the "detection game" useless.
I'll also point out that this information is relevant to the current study (also being run by Jeff Pettis) here in Massachusetts, and I expect would have changed the discussion regarding injecting thousands and thousands of trees here in Massachusetts with imidacloprid.
I attended a small meeting with Jeff and the APHIS team in charge of the tree injections about a year ago. Also present were the Massachusetts State Apiarist, our bee inspector (who is in charge of the fieldwork for the current study), the state pesticide program director, the folks doing the actual tree injections, staff from the local ALB office, citizens, and beekeepers...This information would have been entirely relevant to the discussion and situation at hand. I'm not sure what the point of such a meeting is if the government employee in charge of honeybee research withholds such relevant and important information, especially if he has done the work himself and is confident enough about the results to be trying to publish. I won't estimate what the financial cost of this meeting was, but 5 or more APHIS employees and Jeff Pettis flew in from D.C. ...the meeting was in the evening (so everyone needed a hotel room), and the state officials largely came from Boston to Worcester (about an hour away) for the meeting...yet Jeff didn't share the relevant data he had? I hope this isn't true.
I hope Gavin is correct about the claims made in this article.
deknow
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