>Mike Rowbottom wrote:
>
>> I find it hard to understand how industrially produced thymol (chemically,
>> for example,  5-Methyl-2-(1-methylethyl)phenol - C10H14O) can be used to
>> treat bees producing Organic honey.


Bill Truesdell's ensuing comments on organics were generally realistic but
included:
>"Natural" pesticides that are much more destructive to the environment
>than many "manufactured" pesticides are approved.

        As a longtime supporter of the organics movement, and having
advised successive NZ Ministers of Health on poisons for many years, I've
never heard this contention and would wish to discourage its spread.  Could
we be told of a few examples?
        Bill offers not cases but reasoning:
> If they were not, then you could not sell your produce either because it
>would not be there or damage would make it unappetizing and un-sellable.
                This reasoning I find hard to follow.  If what is meant is
that natural pesticides are the main explanation for the existence of real
organic food, that is not a very good way to explain the fact.  For one
thing, a mantis or ladybird is not a pesticide.

        Thymol is a natural product, similar to several others of the
isoprenoid family and known to be degraded by natural systems.  True, it
can be synthesized by industry, and not all such attempts do accurately
copy the natural chemical (e.g. the classic
http://www.connectotel.com/gmfood/trypto.html ).  But I would still argue
that properly pure thymol is on its face a less worrying pesticide than
most or all synthetic chemicals of kinds containing chemical structures
that do not occur in nature at all or are so modified (by substitution of
fluorine atoms etc) that they will likely not be processed by ordinary
natural enzyme systems.
        BTW the thymol molecule has 14 not 140 hydrogen atoms.

R