>   I think
> almost everything the article referred to has been discussed on this list,
> so it felt very familiar.  Even had a comment at the end by Peter Borst.
>
>
The diatribes against him by most of the posters is also illuminating. Lack
of facts and lots of personal attacks (he is in the employ of the pesticide
companies!).

One very large problem we all have here on the list in discussing the
neonics is that there are different ones, different application methods and
even different combinations of neonics and other pesticides. Also different
plants may take up the pesticide in different concentrations depending on
application methods or the plant itself (sunflower vs corn).

So Stan suffered harm with soil injection, but things got better with seed
coating. The problem is that the issue with others is just neonics, not
application methods.

Soil injection is the method used for forest trees. Is that a good idea? I
do not know since I do not know the tree, bloom, uptake of the neonic, etc.

In addition, some of the studies in the article were on "pesticides" and
were not exclusive to the neonics. But the implication was that the nics
were the problem. Add that the study of neonics and their effect on bees is
unprecedented (in my beekeeping experience) and I only wish the same effort
had occurred with other pesticides. For example the findings that learning
is affected by many pesticides, not just the neonics. We never looked.

So how can we isolate just what is the problem? As Stan noted, when the
application method was changed, things seemed to get better. One of the
neonics he noted in his post to me is another poster child but, so far,
there appears to be no effect. That is what is frustrating to me. If it is
that bad, then there should be. I realize there are sub-lethal effects, but
his 15% losses are what many beekeepers would welcome as a major
improvement.

Last night I conducted a survey of the local beekeepers on winter survival.
One has bees next to a golf course. Losses were heavy there compared to
less than 10% winter kill of their colonies elsewhere. For me, in view of
my look at Regent and the Ontario ban, golf courses are bad for bees
because of pesticides which include all of the things that people have had
problems with on this list- insecticides, fungicides and weed killer. The
arrival at that conclusion is not difficult since the beekeeper enjoyed
excellent success in many other locations, but then we run into difficulty.

What did kill the bees? Unless we have a list of all the pesticides used,
we are at a loss to pin the tail on any donkey. Blame the neonics? It would
be easy , but we know that Reagent is approved for use in the US on golf
courses; it is ground injected among other methods; and it is deadly to
bees.

So what killed the bees? That is still the main question.

Bill Truesdell (the horse is dead)
Bath, Maine

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