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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
James Fischer <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 9 Feb 2016 19:07:25 -0500
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> How do you therefore account for the deluge of "me too"
> papers showing that neonics have negative effects on bees?

That's an easy one - none are attempts to replicate any prior study.

There are some that come close, but even they are not replication.  Some
papers are viewed as deficient in one or more ways, so subsequent attempts
are made to design studies to address the same question while avoiding the
problems cited, and do a better job.   There are also different modes of
exposure, different crops, and so on, so the papers are not a series of
attempts to answer the same single question, but instead, a broadly
divergent set of attempts to answer different questions.

> How many times does this have to be proved?

The flippant answer would be "Until it IS proven!", but the concern being
addressed is NOT the general question "Are pesticides, at high doses,
harmful to bees?"  The concerns being addressed can be summarized as "Are
pesticides, at the doses currently considered "safe", actually unsafe for
bees under THESE conditions?"

Remember guttation water?  Seemed pretty nonsensical when first trotted out
as an example of a mode of exposure for bees.  But more work has tended to
show multiple scenarios where bees can easily get additional and significant
"pesticide exposure via this route", over and above the doses they get from
nectar and pollen.

Here's a "guttation" paper I have yet to slog through, just as an example of
how the subject is now being looked at from multiple angles. Note that it is
published in a very respectable journal,
http://jee.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/10/29/jee.tov287
http://tinyurl.com/p67duyn

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