I'm finding the press releases re both of the anti-neonic papers in Science to have exaggerated the significance of their actual findings. For example, I was concerned about Tsvetkov's claim that "Realistic experiments showed that neonicotinoids...were associated with...increased queenlessness over time." This would be a BIG DEAL. I hope that the pasted graphic of her Fig. 2D shows below. The experiment, which among other things, tracked the presence of a laying queen in 4 treated and 5 untreated control colonies over 90 days. In the treated group, there were zero laying queens on Day 80, but one was laying again by Day 90. But they did not check to see how many of the treated colonies had laying queens after Day 90. This amount of queen failure was of concern. But then we need to look at the control group. On Day 50, only one of the controls contained a laying queen, and only 3 colonies replaced their queen afterward. Fischer's Exact Test finds that the difference between the groups would be expected to occur 50% of the time--in other words, no claim increased queen failure could be made. It's unfortunate that a prestigious journal could publish a study with such clear errors. -- Randy Oliver Grass Valley, CA www.ScientificBeekeeping.com -- Randy Oliver Grass Valley, CA www.ScientificBeekeeping.com *********************************************** 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