>> bees will always hedge their bets, foraging
>> for BOTH pollen and nectar from multiple 
>> sources at all times

> Hives in canola have hundreds of acres of 
> canola surrounding them 

The example crop used in the paper was Sunflowers.
There aren't any Sunflower plantings in France
anywhere near the size of Canadian canola fields.

Also, the uniquely massive Canadian canola 
fields would make the foraging times for 
both nectar and pollen both much shorter 
than the paper's estimates, so for canola, 
the nectar forager food consumption would 
be far lower, and any presumed contamination 
lower.

In fact, canola is an excellent example
to illustrate to Bob H just how wild the 
guesses about foraging trips/times were.

> The amounts calculated are so much above the sub
> lethal doses that they cite four papers for that they 
> felt they could still make the conclusions they did

But they neglected perhaps the most basic point of
all - imidacloprid DOES NOT bio-accumulate in bees!

The adding up of accumulated exposure over time
would inherently be invalid, as bees can metabolize
imidaclopird.  Suchail et all (2003) found that the
metabolism half-life of imidacloprid in honey bees
was 4.5 to 5 hours with no detectable residues 
found in bees 24 hours after exposure ("Metabolism 
of Imidacloprid in Apis mellifera" Pest Mnmgt Science;
60, 291-296)

I did not mention this before as I did not want
to be so bluntly insulting to the authors of the 
paper, but the bare-metal truth is that they made, 
as I said, basic and profound errors, and the lack
of understanding of the metabolization of 
imidicloprid is perhaps the most basic.

Stunningly basic.
Devastatingly profound.


 

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