Sitting in the shop building pallets today, pondering all the great
discussion on testing and no neonics exposure,  and trying to understand the
point. (I know I mentioned it)  
The real questions is "so what?"  what does it show us?  That we can find
some unsoiled areas of the US?  That will not help us much.  First of, we
would have to show that bees in these virgin areas live in a panacea, and
don't have issues with mites or chems.   They may be fair for a "baseline"
but against what measuring stick?  I can see that getting agreement on
anything is about impossible.  If the hives did poorly in Nirvana, then we
would deduce that they are the same as everywhere else.  But most would
claim we missed a variable.   If they did well we would have the same
problem.  The anti everything group would declare a huge victory, and we
would in reality still not know what the issue is exactly.
It may be very interesting to do a bee/ larvae test for certain pesticides
compared to hives that are filed with different chems, but I have already
seen much argument about the levels of chems in different locations in the
comb, so I am not sure we would get any agreement on that either.

A simple sample from some feral hives in these areas should be sufficient to
establish a baseline,  but we already assume a baseline of zero. So why
bother?

It seems to me we getting off track again.  What it seems to me we need to
really know,  is what levels are really getting into the bees in different
areas(IE high neonic areas vs low, maybe certain crops)  and what levels
start to see a consistent decline in the hive.

From what I am reading and hearing so far, it seems the wax is acting like a
sink, and the Larvae are not picking things up.  Also the bees are
metabolizing a lot of different chems.  Just as every life form does.  What
we are seemingly clueless about is levels that are problematic,  and how its
getting into the bees.   It also appears to me that we can test wax and
pollen all day long,  but we are clueless as to how much is in the bee?  Can
anyone explain that to me?

Really reminds me of the argument about sodium in our diets....  insane..
Trying to go back to the base,  the difference between a growing hive and a
dying hive.   heck I am not even sure we can define that well.

Charlie

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