> I learned about the "warning" waggle dance,
> but I would love to hear your thoughts on this,
> and Dr. Nieh's other research.
Nieh's papers are here
http://labs.biology.ucsd.edu/nieh/papers.html
Kudos to him for making them freely available.
The 2012 paper the news article mentioned (shame on them - no citation)
seems to be this one:
"A nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonist affects honey bee sucrose
responsiveness and decreases waggle dancing"
Journal of Experimental Biology. 215:2022-2029.
Eiri D, Nieh JC (2012)
http://www.biology.ucsd.edu/labs/nieh/papers/EiriNieh2012.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/nskza2l
In the abstract, it is said "Bees that ingested imidacloprid (0.21 or 2.16
ng bee ^-1)."
The notation used is a silly affectation, the "-1" being an exponential way
of saying "per bee", (to the -1 power means "over 1", so "divide by bee").
In physics, this sort of nonsense of "dividing by bee" is not tolerated.
Editors and peers demand that the two character string "-1" be replaced by
the 3-charcter string "per" so that everyone, even press and layman, can
better understand right off the bat. (Those repeatedly making this error
are sometimes subjected to 1,000,000 lashes, or in scientific notation, a
"Mega-Hertz".)
Later in the same abstract, the values are translated into parts-per-billion
"(0.21 ng bee-1, 24 p.p.b.)", showing that he is not making the errors made
by our good friend Dr. Lu of the Harvard School of Delusional Values. So
far, so good.
But 24 ppb is roughly 5 times the 5 ppb level what we have been told by
regulators and manufactures to expect as a maximum value in nectar.
Any effects claimed at this level have to first prefaced with a showing of
how such a dose would accumulate in a ditch or a puddle of water to be
consumed. I'm not aware of any natural process that would work that way.
Rain is not going to wash the Imidacloprid off leaves, or out of nectaries
and concentrate it.
It is immensely difficult to get much of anything out of plant materials,
something I have learned the hard way since I started making Bee-Quick in
1999. The temperatures and pressures required to extract oils from plant
materials are high enough that my distillation rigs are subject to snap
inspections from not just the "alcohol" part of the ATF, who want to make
sure that I am not making moonshine, but also by the "firearms" part of the
ATF, who want to verify that I am not using the pressure vessels to do
things like ammonia synthesis, which would imply that I would be making
"weapons of mass destruction", various primitive poison gasses out of
Haber's notebook, I suppose. Then the city gets involved, demanding that I
maintain a "High Pressure Boiler Operating Engineer" certification and
license, so that nothing explodes. Steam pressures can be scary. Even more
scary is steam pressures in a fully-automated continuous unattended process.
So what I am saying is that the "accumulation" of systemic pesticides in
water through natural processes is something that I'd want someone to show
us before they jump to the conclusion that it happens. All bets are off
when the pesticide is sprayed, but even then, the process of water tends to
be more of a dilution process than an accumulation process.
Imidacloprid in surface water is going to be short-lived, as Imidacloprid
breaks down in light and water:
The aqueous photolysis half-life is less than 3 hours, so sun plus water
breaks down Imidacloprid rapidly, by design.
The hydrolysis half-life of imidacloprid ranges from 33-44 days at pH 7 and
25C, so water without sunlight (groundwater) is far slower to break down the
poison, but this is where bees will not reach the water, as bees only go
where the sun can shine.
Imidacloprid has a photolysis half-life of 39 days at the soil surface, with
a range of 26.5-229 days when incorporated into the soil, but this would be
light alone, without any moisture. Not relevant to bees, who are not going
to consume soil, and will not live long without water.
Remember "guttation water"? There was a time when it was worried that this
would have higher systemic levels than nectar or pollen. An EU panel did a
good job of looking at the issue a while ago, to no fanfare at all:
http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/downloadDocument.cfm?id=693
http://tinyurl.com/q74mu5s
So, I again repeat my question: "...how the heck bees are supposed to taste
Imidacloprid-tainted water, and know to avoid it?"
What Nieh called a "warning" signal seems very close to what Tom Seeley
calls a "stop signal" in the context of dancing about new nest sites for
swarming.
So, while Nieh got a "stop" in reaction to alarm pheromone and leg-pinching
at a feeder, Seeley sees "stop signals" used as a part of a
pseudo-democratic process in house-hunting.
But, to my knowledge, no one has claimed that bees will perform a "stop
signal" head-butting in reaction to encountering pesticide laced feed at any
level.
Pesticide discussions are just tiring, moreso given that last winter the
Boston-Atlanta Megalopolis Axis of beekeepers lost more hives to simple
starvation and the lingering effect of fall varroa reinfestation than to
any pesticide effects. Beekeepers in Chi-Pitts fared even worse. This
winter looks to be a repeat of last winter, so I'm telling everyone to go
long in candyboards and varroa counts between Halloween and Thanksgiving,
and hoping I will be proven wrong.
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