>
> > that we shift our focus with insecticide adverse
> > effects away from honey bees (managed livestock) to "pollinators"
> > in general.
>
> In the absense of field evidence of significant harm?


Good question, Paul (somehow the above comment got sidetracked somehow to
managed solitary and bumblebees).  I wasn't claiming that there was
evidence or not. but rather that on-the-ground evidence is what I'd be most
interested in seeing (I find your videos of apparently healthy populations
of native pollinators to be compelling).

The issue that I was trying to address is that so long as EPA focuses only
upon managed honey bees, then the implication is that so long as managed
hives aren't present, then pesticide use need not be restricted.

That then leads to one of two solutions-:

   1. tell beekeepers to move their hives at the drop of a hat, or
   2. to kick beekeepers off their locations.


If we instead shift back to FIFRA's "no unreasonable risk to man or the
environment," protection of pollinators in general would reduce the risk to
the environment as a whole, since pollinators are an essential player in
most terrestrial ecosystems.

Since pollinators are not generally considered as "pests," and are
generally considered as "beneficials," regulating pesticide use to protect
their populations would seem to some of us to be entirely reasonable, even
if the land upon which the pesticide was applied was privately owned.

Regulation based upon honey bees as proxies for all pollinators is
insufficient, due to the buffering capacity of the honey bee colony against
pesticides.  If instead, EPA were to regulate to protect pollinators in
general, honey bees and beekeepers, as well as the remnants of natural
ecosystems surviving in the margins of ag lands, would all benefit.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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