> Last I heard this thread, in spite of persistent 
> efforts to hijack it, is about a specific lab test 
> that indicated some interesting effects observed 
> when specific chemical to specific stages of 
> developing bees.

Yeah, funny about that.  But let me respond to one of the side-issues
raised, none the less:

>> There were 812,000 lbs of paraquat applied in 
>> Calif in 2010, as opposed to only 266,000 lbs of
>> imidacloprid.  

As a very tiny amount of systemic pesticides do the job of much larger
amounts of non-systemic pesticides, it seems disingenuous to compare
agricultural chemicals on a "pounds used" basis.  

But it angers me to see concern for bees voiced without a far greater
concern also being voiced for the farmworkers who are still being exposed to
Paraquat.  It is a relic of the 1960s, an era so devoid of environmental and
safety panache that people still claimed Agent Orange was safe, and
seatbelts were rare.     It was banned by the EU and UK back in the
2006-2007 timeframe, and it mystifies me why it has not been replaced here
in the USA by the far less toxic "Diquat". 

> Paraquat shows strong adverse effects upon 
> bee larvae at a part per trillion, but Imidacloprid 
> has such a low toxicity to bee larvae that no one 
> has been able to even determine an LD50!

I think it should be clear that the days of depending primarily upon "acute"
data are pretty much over.  This is a signal of great advances in both the
lowered toxicity of the systemics, and the smaller doses to which bees are
exposed as a result of the "systemic" approach.  Truly "better living
through chemistry", and in less than a single beekeeper's lifetime.  The air
and water is also orders of magnitude cleaner than it was only a few decades
ago.  But this means that the work has gotten more complex, as the risks
presented are more subtle.

So, let's sharpen our pencils and learn this new material and get ahead of
the curve.  We learned about varroa mites the hard and slow way - we trusted
the academics to do all the research, we passively listened to them
politely, and it took them a full decade to realize that what was killing
our bees was not Varroa jacobsonii at all, but a mite that had far different
gross morphology (oblong rather than circular body shell).  

It took yet another decade to realize that alternating between Fluvalinate
and Coumaphos (a freakin' organophosphate! What were they thinking?!!?) was
not as good an idea as the research and extension folks had led us to
believe, as those of us who refused to use organophosphates fared better
than those who did alternate treatments, and created multiply-resistant
mites straight out of a Japanese monster movie.

Is it any wonder that cults of beekeepers emerged with taglines like "No
Scientists, Just Good Beekeepers", and later, "No Scientists, Just Really
Good Beekeepers"?  They felt powerless and threatened, their bees kept dying
no matter what they did, and they reacted as anyone would in that situation,
they started making up myths to explain their otherwise incomprehensible
reality.  

But are we any better than that, when a thread starts about a specific
peer-reviewed paper, and the discussion bounces so far afield that it
includes a comparison to an ABJ article, a side trip to the Northern Alberta
canola fields, and another trip to the "Almond desert" of California?  (I'll
say it again - "Almonds did for beekeeping what cocaine did for Miami.")

My idea of a good "tribute" would be some focused on-point discussion of the
subjects at issue, and less feint and parry, less asides.  

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