The following information seems to support Allen's point of view
Luc Belzunces, Directeur de l’UMR INRA at the University of Avignon and the Vaucluse, makes this conclusion in the June 2009 edition of INRA magazine. (http://www.inra.fr/l_institut/l_inra_en_bref/l_essentiel_en_documents/inra_magazine)
Controversy around the systemic insecticide seed coating
"Regarding imidacloprid. We have shown in the laboratory that if the lethal dose in acute toxicity is already very low compared to other Insecticides (4 to 40 nanograms per Bee, 1 ng = 10-9 g)
The chronic lethal dose is approximately 4 000 times lower. To assess the effect of chronic toxicity, the bees were fed for 10 days with a sugar syrup containing known concentrations of the product: the ingestion of 1 picogram per day is enough to kill a bee in 10 days (1 pg = 10-12 gram). Moreover, imidacloprid degrades into six metabolites some of which are even more toxic.
As with most insecticides, there are sub lethal effects, that is to say the bee does not die, but shows behavioural problems (disorientation), physiological (malformation of wings), reduced growth ..., or metabolic (hypoglycaemia ...).
All these effects can eventually affect the survival of the colony. Once we were able to measure very low doses of imidacloprid in pollen, we saw that the concentration bio-available is of the order of one microgram per kg of pollen.
A nurse bee that consumes 60 mg of pollen in 10 days, will have an intake of 60 pg. This is clearly a hazard.
These results transform conventional conceptions and our first paper, published in 2001, made after an initial request from Bayer, was not well received.
We attach great importance to our freedom to publish, and include this automatically in our contracts."
Bil Harley
France, latitude 45.8, long. 4.8, Alt. 117m
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