> > Re: > http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm Just how low can a reporter stoop? This story is patently libelous. Just because a reporter has the clear agenda of blaming imidacloprid for all bee problems, doesn't mean that she needs to fabricate some conflict of interest nonsense about Jerry. If she had actually taken the time to read the article, rather than just the headline, she might have understood that Jerry's paper was not concerned with pesticides, other than one brief mention, in which it says: "A survey of bee samples from across the USA revealed traces of pesticides in many bee samples, but none were shown to correlate with CCD," referring to Mullin, et al.* What they actually said was: "While exposure to many of these neurotoxicants elicits acute and sublethal reductions in honey bee fitness, the effects of these materials in combinations and their direct association with CCD or declining bee health remains to be determined," so I do not feel that Jerry misrepresented them. What apparently ticked off the Future "journalist" was that she was afraid that Jerry's paper might divert attention from her pet peeve--that Bayer's neonicotinoids must be killing bees. If she had taken a moment to read the Mullin paper, she would have found: "Our results do not support sufficient amounts and frequency in pollen of imidacloprid (mean of 3.1 ppb in less than 3% of pollen samples) or the less toxic neonicotinoids thiacloprid and acetamiprid to account for impacts on bee health." This was not Jerry that said this, but the team of excellent pesticide researchers cited below. I've written to Fortune, suggesting that they publish a retraction of the libelous claims. Feel free to do so yourselves: [log in to unmask] Randy Oliver *Mullin CA, Frazier M, Frazier JL, Ashcraft S, Simonds R, et al. (2010) High levels of miticides and agrochemicals in North American apiaries: Implications for honey bee health. PLoS ONE 5: e9754. *********************************************** 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 Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm