>
> Have you watched the documentary "Vanishing of the Bees" Bill?
>
> PLB?
>
> Commercial beekeepers David Mendes & David Hackenberg traveled TO France
> (along with the above documentary film crew)and interviewed French
> beekeepers. Attended beekeeper meetings. Seem to paint a different story
> Bill?


My problem with this one is that the two that went already made their minds
up. We know that Hackenburg was told his bees would die from Varroa the
year he said that the neonics caused it. Mendes has been in other clips
where he implicates the neonics. Add the furvor that was in France against
the neonics, then bias is fairly strong.

It is interesting that Hackenburg was reported to suffer major losses this
year. If it was from the neonics, then what was he doing pollinating those
fields? If he did not pollinate them, then something else caused his
problems, maybe the same thing that caused them years before.

I know a beekeeper who is anti-neonics and who has written a book on
beekeeping. Should I follow the advice in their book? Not if I know that
they have yet to make it through a Maine winter. I would rather listen to
someone whose bees survive every winter. So why should I listen to
Hackenburg when there are other commercial beekeepers who seem to do fine
even with all the stuff around them?

But the telling problem with accepting a documentary as proof positive that
X is causing a problem, is that most all documentaries are anecdotal. They
are propaganda pieces. The ones that leave the door open are the best
because the truth is we still do not have all the puzzle pieces.

I am still amazed that Regent is discounted as a part of this puzzle. At
least the IPM people did not have an ax to grind.

The section right after they talk about France says:

There is no doubt that these

potent new pesticides can kill bees
if bees are exposed. Just 3.7 bil-
lionths of a gram of imidacloprid
will likely kill a bee (oral LD50= 3.7
to 81 ng/bee). Another pesticide,
fipronil, is also potent with an oral
LD50 of 3.7 to 6 ng/bee. For com-
parison, the oral LD50 of cyperme-
thrin is 160 ng/bee and for the
organophosphate dimethoate 152
ng/bee (Colin et al. 2004; Schmuck
et al. 2001; Suchail et al. 2001ab

Note that the LD50 for fipronil (Regent) is 3.7 to 6 ng/bee compared to
Imid of 3.7-81 ng/bee. Regent is 6 max while Imid is 81 a factor of more
than 10! So when IMID is removed from use and bees still die, it has to be
Imid  and it is killing bees at sub-lethal doses or it is still not
completely broken down and kills just the same, while Reagent is still on
the plants at full dose and has 10x the LD50  max as Imid. I go with the
IPM people.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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