Thanks for pointing out the article, Juanse. You are correct that the site has its own bias. Entine's point that neonic bans are bad science is correct, but he swings the pendulum too far the other way: he thinks they're absolutely not the problem. In the New York Times article he references, Adee talks about a real event that happened to his bees, Adee's only mention of neonics. He doesn't blame them for CCD. But Entine tries to make it look like the NYT author, Ms. Strom, is. She says "some studies show that" neonics have bad effects, she's not making the claims Entine thinks she is about CCD. And it's true that some studies show neonics do have bad effects. If we equate "CCD" with "continuing losses of 40%+" as Entine seems to be, I think neonics and all chemicals in the environment must play a role in bee declines. Yet, in the Reddit AMA Entine conducted ( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5i3dfr/science_ama_series_im_jon_ entine_executive/), he says "there is no known link between pesticides and CCD." Besides recently published evidence on organosilicone adjuvants and fungicides, there's recent evidence on neonics themselves: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23844170 -upregulates P450 gene in larva in detoxifying http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091364 -impaired navigation in adult bees https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24145453 -impaired immunity and increased viral replication The lead comment after the article sums it up nicely: "What is sad about this (among other things) is that bees are not at all well served by oversimplifying what is really a very complex issue." Tim eastern Washington *********************************************** 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