Chemicals are used off label all over the world and the US is no different. I posted excerpts from the following report back in July. It is one of *many* that look at pesticides and bee losses. They found no correlation between imidacloprid and bee die offs in France. They did find alarmingly high levels of beekeeper applied coumaphos:

> The acaricide coumaphos is used to treat varroa mites and was frequently found in apicultural matrices at high concentrations, although its residues were not detected in honey at two of our five locations. The commercial honey bee veterinarian medication containing coumaphos (Perizin) was not available in France when samples were collected; however, some apiculturists prepared home-made coumaphos formulations using the dog drug Asuntol. 

> We observed that the doses of these coumaphos preparations applied in hives were often higher than the recommended dose. The concentration of fat soluble stable ingredients increase in beeswax and migrate from the combs into stored honey. The higher the concentration in the wax, the higher the risk of residues in honey (Wallner 1992). 

Influence of Pesticide Residues on Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Colony Health in France
MARIE-PIERRE CHAUZAT, et al  Environ. Entomol. 38(3): 514Ð523 (2009)
             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Access BEE-L directly at:
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A0=BEE-L