> Didn’t Monsanto patent it as an antibiotic?

If you are referring to patent US7771736 (https://www.google.com/patents/US7771736), that strikes me as evidence that it is a fairly narrow-spectrum antibiotic.  It also seems, based on the limited data released, that to show those antibiotic properties generally requires concentrations well above what I thought were field-relevant exposures.  Finally, given the length of time that glyphosate has been in common use, if it were a hazard to bee gut flora, it seems curious that any such effects would not have been noticed sooner.

That said, the patent also says that "Oxalic acid was shown to enhance the inhibition of EPSPS by glyphosate" so once again, we beekeepers could be making things worse through our varroa treatments.  The recent rise in popularity of oxalic treatments might also explain the lack of evidence of prior problems.

More questions than answers, I'm afraid.

Mike Rossander



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