Just to bring home the PPB thing.

"ppb or parts per billion: a measure of concentration roughly equivalent to
a whiskey shot glass (of contaminant) in 1000 railroad tank cars"

From: http://www.battleground.in.gov/water/Glossary.htm

 

It isn't very much. Someone with the time might want to look up how many
tons of pesticide gets produced in the good old USA. Then there's the matter
of sub-lethal effects. Eating too much tuna can affect the brain development
in children. (Mercury, you know) This might not show up until adulthood when
they show some interest in becoming beekeepers. I worry a little about the
effect on the colony when, let's say,  a year later the emerging brood has a
shorter life expectancy because they have been dining on pesticide-laced
pollen. How does one measure that? In fact, where would one find clean
pollen to set up a control group? 

 

Dick Marron


****************************************************
* General Information About BEE-L is available at: *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/default.htm   *
****************************************************