# More ... > Beekeeping and the environment >  Randy Oliver's Critique of the 'Harvard Study'.

## Stromnessbees

That's ok, Jon, you obviously like Randy Oliver's site. Now let's have a closer look:

This is the so called Harvard study: 
*http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty/...e-disorder.pdf* 


My next post shows what Randy Oliver has to say about it.

Let's have a decent discussion about his comments, without derailing, moving bits about or ridicule.

Due to its length I had to split the article in two, and for ease of referencing I have divided it up into numbered sections. 


*1*
Re this study, at first glance it appears to support the hypothesis that chronic exposure to field realistic doses of imidacloprid during summer and fall can lead to late winter collapse of the treated colonies. Unfortunately, there are a great deal of factual misrepresentations and
fuzzy thinking in the paper, which obviously was not peer reviewed by any bee biologist nor toxicologist.  For example, the author stated in an interview:

"When other conditions cause hive collapse--such as disease or pests--many dead bees are typically found inside and outside the affected hives."

Could someone please refresh my memory?  Other than in the case of tracheal mite, which diseases or pests leave many dead bees in a hive?  (Note that starvation or acute pesticide toxicity would not fall into the category of "disease or pest").


*2*
My reading of the paper suggests that the author knows little about bees, little about pesticides, nothing about HFCS, had no understanding of the distribution of systemic pesticides in plants.
*

3*
Let's look at a few more sentences from the paper: 

 "We hypothesized that the first occurrence of CCD in 2006/2007 resulted from the presence of imidacloprid ... in high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), fed to honey bees as
an alternative to sucrose-based food. There are three facts to support this hypothesis. First, since most of the suspected but creditable causes for CCD were not new to apiculture, there must have been an additional new stressor introduced to honey bee hives contemporaneous with the first occurrence of CCD during the winter months of 2006 and early 2007."

As Bob and others have pointed out, CCD actually started occurring in 2004-2005.


*4*
 "Second, while commercial beekeepers appear to be affected by CCD at a disproportional rate"

This is not true according to any of the surveys that I've seen. 

", their beekeeping practices have been relatively unchanged during these years except for the replacement of honey or sucrose with HFCS as the supplemental sugar source for economic and convenient reasons.... Although the replacement of honey/sucrose-based feeds with HFCS among commercial beekeepers took place much earlier than 2006/2007, it was the timing of the introduction of neonicotinoid insecticides to the cornseed treatment program first occurring in 2004/2005 that coincides with CCD emergence (Bonmatin et al.,
2005; Benbrook, 2008)."

It appears that the first cases of CCD preceded this time period, since any 
HFCS produced from such treated corn would have necessarily have been produced
following the season of harvest.


*5*
The authors then cite a few studies that show that systemic insecticides 
are translocated, as they are intended, throughout the plants.  But then they stretch by
stating:

" These study results lend credence to our hypothesis that the systemic property of imidacloprid is capable of being translocated from treated seeds to the whole plant, including corn kernels and therefore likely into HFCS."

My gosh, this is one helluva assumption!  Without taking the time to simply confirm that Imd winds up in the kernels, the author *assumes* that it is concentrated there at high levels!  An then further goes out on a limb by "assuming" that any such imidacloprid is then concentrated when the corn is used to produce HFCS (ignoring the fact that most corn is treated with clothianidin, rather than imidacloprid):


*6*
The paper turns into farce when the author states: 

"we used food-grade HFCS fortified with different levels of imidacloprid, mimicking the levels that are assumed to have been present in the older HFCS. The range of dosages used in this study from 20 to 400 ?g/kg were not only environmentally relevant"

Since when has 400 ppb ever been been considered to be "environmentally relevant"?  Levels of 1-4 ppb are environmentally relevant; levels above 40 ppb are usually considered to be overtly toxic.  So the 400 ppb figure is 100 - 400 times as strong as the normal measured levels in the field due to seed treatment.


*7*
But then the author goes into la-la land with some even wilder creative assumptions:

"Since there is no tolerance level for imidacloprid in HFCS, we applied a 10-fold concentrating factor, or 0.5 ppm (500?g/kg) of imidacloprid in HFCS, by taking into account
the uptake by corn plants from seeds that are treated with imidacloprid."

He simply created this "concentrating factor" out of thin air!  He gave absolutely no justification for it.  In the actual process of making HFCS, pesticides are largely removed.  As I stated before, all that the author had to do would have been to ask Roger Simonds at the USDA Gastonia pesticide testing lab as to the actual measured levels of Imd in HFCS, and thus would not have brought embarrassment to Harvard Medical School by such a
ludicrous assumption.

"Therefore, we 
are confident that the imidacloprid dosages applied in this study would be comparable, if not lower to those encountered by honey bees inside and outside of their hives."

Unfortunately, the authors' confidence is not supported by any actual field measurements whatsoever!


*8*
The authors state: 

"There are several questions that remain unanswered as a result of this study. First, the systematic loss of sealed brood in the imidacloprid-treated and control hives may
indicate a common stress factor that was present across all 4 apiaries."

Like, maybe the field investigators should have taken a few nosema or varroa counts, rather than simply assuming that these common parasites weren't killing the colonies!  For all we know, all the hives could have bee crawling with varroa or badly infected with nosema.  One statement suggests that varroa was evident: "nor a large number of Varroa mites was
observed in hives during the summer and fall seasons," suggesting some something less than a "large" number of mites was indeed observed!  And then they waited until October 5 to treat with Apistan strips, which are ineffective against mites in many areas of the U.S.


*9*
The authors, on a roll, simply do not know when to stop: 

"If imidacloprid exposure is truly the sole cause of CCD, it might also explain the scenario in which CCD occurred in honey bee hives not fed with HFCS.  Considering the sensitivity
of honey bees to imidacloprid as demonstrated in this study and the widespread uses of
imidacloprid and other neonicotinoid insecticides, pollen, nectar, and guttation drops produced from those plants would have contained sufficient amounts of neonicotinoid insecticide residues to induce CCD"

What are they talking about when they say "considering the sensitivity"? Even the lowest fed dosage (20 ppb) is about 5-20 times higher than that commonly found in nectar, and the other three doses were far higher--it is amazing to me that the colonies were not killed outright!


*10*
Oddly, I don't see any explanation as to why the investigators changed treatment dosages mid trial.  To their credit, they initially treated the colonies with "field realistic" doses of the insecticide: 0.1 - 10 ppb (that would have actually have been a decent study).   I suspect that after feeding the colonies for four straight weeks in July, and not noticing any adverse effects, that they then decided that they had better really hit the colonies hard if they wanted to support their hypothesis--so they arbitrarily ramped up the lowest dose to 200 times stronger, and the highest dose to 40x stronger (that oughtta do it!).

I can only imagine their surprise and disappointment when after then feeding colonies a full half gallon of obviously toxic treated syrup weekly for another 9 straight weeks, they still noted virtually no adverse effects!  Note that  the amount of broodrearing was unaffected at the 20, 40, and 200 ppb dosages, and only slightly depressed at the clearly toxic 400 ppb dose!  Note that  the colonies were all still alive at midwinter, 3 months after the dosing ended.

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## Stromnessbees

*11*
So why did the colonies die?  Such pinsecticide exposure to hives in late summer  has been clearly demonstrated to greatly increase the chance of a  colony later dying from nosema or varroa infection during the winter.   In this study, poisoning the colonies all through late summer and early  fall likely hampered the ability of the colonies to prepare a healthy  population for winter.


*12*
Oddly, the investigators also took biweekly measurements of the cluster sizes of the colonies, yet chose not to include the results in the paper.  This makes me wonder
whether there was no effect of treatment upon the colony populations,  and the authors simply decided to exclude any data that did not support  their hypothesis.


*13*
So although this paper is surely going to be cited by anti-neonic advocates ad  nauseum, I find it to be a case in which an initially fairly designed  study (the dosing of hives with a series of four field realistic doses  of Imd) turned to farce when the investigators arbitrarily ramped up the  doses, and blew it on parasite management.


*14*
In my assessment, it appears that the data from this study actually support an  alternative hypothesis--that field realistic doses of imidacloprid had  no measurable adverse effects upon the colonies.  And even patently  toxic doses had little immediate effect.  I suspect that the apparent  delayed effect was due to the impact of the insecticide upon late summer  colony populations (which the authors inexplicably did not present),  which led to later collapse due to parasite buildup.


*15*
i find it unfortunate that the press, including both of our national bee journals,  gave publicity to this paper without any sort of critical analysis.   Such messages only confuse the public.  Pesticides are a major issue to  the beekeeping community.  What we need are well designed and executed  studies, (as well as better enforcement of pesticide law) in order
to solve these problems.  Sadly, this study just confuses the issues.

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## Neils

I've just added a bit of context to the original post that was omitted in the original split from the thread in the links sub forum.

I guess an initial question is "what next?"

It's Randy Oliver's assessment of the Harvard study from Scientific Beekeeping and having read both I don't really disagree with his critique of it.  As you seem to think that the study is credible, what elements of that criticism don't you agree with?

In many respects you could put those points directly to him and see what he has to say about it.

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## Stromnessbees

> I've just added a bit of context to the original post that was omitted in the original split from the thread in the links sub forum.


Please be so fair as to mark your edits in colour. 
I did my best to copy this over verbatim, as I want to discuss Randy's comments, not yours.


I also expect you to change the title, as the term 'stuff' seems deliberately chosen to make this topic look rubbish. (Title currently chosen by Nellie: '*More pesticide stuff from Doris - Randy Oliver*')

By using such not-so-subtle methods of dragging the pesticide topic into the mud you are showing your true colours again.

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## Neils

It's your text, you edit it. If I touch it you'll just accuse me of putting words into your mouth of distorting what you're trying to say or something.




> That's ok, Jon, you obviously like Randy Oliver's site. Now let's have a closer look:
> 
> This is the so called Harvard study: 
> *http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty/...e-disorder.pdf* 
> 
> 
> My next post shows what Randy Oliver has to say about it.
> 
> Let's have a decent discussion about his comments, without derailing, moving bits about or ridicule.


If you can't change the title (and presuming you want to call it something else) let me know what you want it called and I'll change it for you. In Edit Post select "Go Advanced"  I can't remember off the top of my head whether topic titles can be changed otherwise. It is not clear what your aim for this thread is so you'll have to give me a hand with regards to what you want the thread to be called.

For the record I didn't create the topic.

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## Stromnessbees

> For the record I didn't create the topic.


Who chose the current title?

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## Jon

The black ops guys from Bayer crop science probably.

Just get on with the debate!

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## Bridget

I can't tell you how boring all this bickering and ranting is.  I'm pressing the off button on this thread till you all calm down.

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## gavin

We at SBAi are providing a service.  Nit-picking and moderate bickering is allowed in this corner, and the significant others benefit in that the bickerers may have let off their steam online.  When the bicker-o-meter rises above moderate there is another less obvious place for the posts to go.  Once the bicker-o-meter sticks at the 'personal insult' point, more severe action needs to be taken.  It is all under control. For now anyway.

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## Stromnessbees

As this thread carries my name can I please have a neutral title for it, something like 'Randy Oliver's critique of the Harvard study'?
Once this is done I'll tell you what I think of it.

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## Stromnessbees

Thanks for the change of title.

I actually want to give others, like Gavin and Nellie or anybody else a chance to get their opinion on the critique in first, so that they won't be influenced by what I have to say. 

Anybody wanting to have a go yet?

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## Calum

Randy Oliver's Critique of the 'Harvard Study' seems rational.
It raises valid questions that should be tested/controlled in a repeat of the trail.
Also, the number of colonies used in the trail are very very low. 
I would have split the treated goup into two subgroups myself one with low dosage and one with the increased dose, they should have tracked much more data...

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## Bumble

> I actually want to give others, like Gavin and Nellie or anybody else a chance to get their opinion on the critique in first, so that they won't be influenced by what I have to say.


With respect, I'd like to be able to refer to what Randy Oliver says on _his_ site, rather than what seem to be selected highlights. I know there's a link elsewhere, but could you provide one in this thread too? It'll save a lot of time looking for it.

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## Neils

It is currently on the front page of Randy's site:

Scientific beekeeping if it changes I'll try and update the link.

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## Jon

He posted the review on bee-l as well

If you check down the thread list for April there is lots of discussion on the Harvard paper, very little of it supportive.

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## Bumble

Thanks. It's handy to have the Bee-L link too, I find that site a nightmare to navigate. I tend to agree with Randy's critique, he says it much better than I could.

I think the researchers should be ashamed of themselves, they've done themselves no favours. If results don't seem to be coming out the way you hope you should admit it, not ignore the results you don't like, change things mid-study to try to skew things to suit a hypothesis.

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