# More ... > Beekeeping and the environment >  More misinterpreted science - watch out for the spin-fest

## gavin

Hi Folks

Yet another bit of science contributing to the overall picture of the effect of pesticides on bees.  James Nieh's team in California.

Boil it all down and pare away all the spin and what do you get?  Bees fed 24 ppb imidacloprid (that's 20+ times the exposure expected in the UK from seed treatment of oilseed rape) were temporarily affected.  The effect was to make them less keen on lower concentrations of sugar.  Less proboscis extension in trapped bees, less waggle dancing for the weaker sugar.  The effect was measured 1 hour after treatment and, guess what, 24 hours after treatment the effect had gone.  Just as would be predicted from the work that shows that imidacloprid has a half life in a bee of about 5 hrs.

All wrapped up in the usual hype and spun to within an inch of its life.  The University of San Diego claims this 'sheds light' on one of the main culprits suspected to be behind recent bee declines.'

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressreleases/commonly_used_pesticide_turns_honey_bees_into_pick  y_eaters/

So, what this research seems to say is that if bees are exposed to much greater levels than are encountered in properly regulated agriculture, there is a temporary effect.  The effect noted will *decrease* the propensity of the colony to forage on the dangerous flowers and presumably decrease the threat to the colony (obviously a good thing).  Then the colony recovers quickly.  This work just confirms that the way these compounds are used in the UK is OK, but over-dosing and over-use could be dangerous.

Let the spinning, campaigning, and piss-poor journalism commence .....

Gavin  

-------------------------------------------------------
http://jeb.biologists.org/content/215/12/2022.abstract

A nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonist affects honey bee sucrose responsiveness and decreases waggle dancing

    Daren M. Eiri* and
    James C. Nieh

A nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonist, imidacloprid, impairs memory formation in honey bees and has general effects on foraging. However, little is known about how this agonist affects two specific aspects of foraging: sucrose responsiveness (SR) and waggle dancing (which recruits nestmates). Using lab and field experiments, we tested the effect of sublethal doses of imidacloprid on (1) bee SR with the proboscis extension response assay, and (2) free-flying foragers visiting and dancing for a sucrose feeder. Bees that ingested imidacloprid (0.21 or 2.16 ng bee1) had higher sucrose response thresholds 1 h after treatment. Foragers that ingested imidacloprid also produced significantly fewer waggle dance circuits (10.5- and 4.5-fold fewer for 50% and 30% sucrose solutions, respectively) 24 h after treatment as compared with controls. However, there was no significant effect of imidacloprid on the sucrose concentrations that foragers collected at a feeder 24 h after treatment. Thus, imidacloprid temporarily increased the minimum sucrose concentration that foragers would accept (short time scale, 1 h after treatment) and reduced waggle dancing (longer time scale, 24 h after treatment). The effect of time suggests different neurological effects of imidacloprid resulting from the parent compound and its metabolites. Waggle dancing can significantly increase colony food intake, and thus a sublethal dose (0.21 ng bee1, 24 p.p.b.) of this commonly used pesticide may impair colony fitness.

----------


## Jon

Thanks Gav. I read some of the newspaper reports but none of them mentioned the PPB. You need to be testing 1-5 PPB with Imidacloprid.
Why do they always test far higher levels such as in the Harvard Study?
I suspect it is that nothing is noted at lower levels
The other thing is that the lab tests are like the tests being done about 10 years ago.
I think one of the best ways forward is the RFID transmitter work with full colonies foraging in the open.

Did you see the picture of bees in this study. bear in mind the concept of the honeybee colony as a superorganism.

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressreleas..._picky_eaters/

----------


## gavin

Yep, and the 'superorganism' part of this research suggests that the whole colony is fine.

Let's speculate.  Let's imagine that there is a smaller but still detectable effect when you reduce the concentration to one twentieth.  Unlikely, I know, but let's assume it to be true for now.  Then bees flying out to the OSR fields come back a bit unwell.  They are no longer interested in dilute sugar nectar, and don't feel up to doing a lot of waggle dancing.  Their contribution to the overall colony effort declines.  The colony isn't encouraged to visit those dangerous fields.  Other bees going to sycamore and early hawthorn, plus the pears, late plums, dandelions, gorse, you name it, they are fine.  They come back and dance vigorously.  The colony switches to safe forage and hardly touch the stuff with the short-term slightly deleterious effects.

But the whole colony had been contaminated, you say!  OK, but the effects were slight even for the bees that fed on the contaminated nectar and burned up a lot of it on their journeys to and from the dangerous fields.  So it was diluted even more for the other bees.  Once the automatic positive feedback for better forage sources kicks in it would be very diluted.  No problem.

This is a self-regulating system.  The effects were transitory for grossly over-contaminated bees.  There are no alarm bells ringing here for bees in the UK as far as I am concerned.  And we don't see colonies regularly ignoring fields of oilseed rape in favour of other sources out at the same time.  Probably.  As far as I can tell.  Do correct me if you think otherwise.

G.

----------


## Bumble

From Jon's link 


> Remarkably, bees that fed on the pesticide reduced the number of their waggle dances between fourfold and tenfold, said Eiri. And in some cases, the affected bees stopped dancing completely.


Maybe the bees wouldn't have bothered passing on the information because they didn't like what they were being forced to eat?

----------


## Stromnessbees

Let's  have a close look at how Gavin is twisting another study result:




> ...
> The effect was to make them less keen on lower concentrations of sugar.  Less proboscis extension in trapped bees, less waggle dancing for the weaker sugar.  The effect was measured 1 hour after treatment and, guess what, 24 hours after treatment the effect had gone.  Just as would be predicted from the work that shows that imidacloprid has a half life in a bee of about 5 hrs.


Gavin makes it sound as if all the effects had gone within 24 hours. 
But they clearly haven't:




> ...
> Bees that ingested imidacloprid (0.21 or 2.16 ng bee1) had higher sucrose response thresholds 1 h after treatment. Foragers that ingested imidacloprid also produced significantly fewer waggle dance circuits (10.5- and 4.5-fold fewer for 50% and 30% sucrose solutions, respectively) 24 h after treatment as compared with controls. However, there was no significant effect of imidacloprid on the sucrose concentrations that foragers collected at a feeder 24 h after treatment. Thus, imidacloprid temporarily increased the minimum sucrose concentration that foragers would accept (short time scale, 1 h after treatment) and reduced waggle dancing (longer time scale, 24 h after treatment). The effect of time suggests *different neurological effects of imidacloprid resulting from the parent compound and its metabolites.*


It's even mentioned twice: there is a longer lasting effect, be it from imidacloprid itself or its metabolites. 
All the other talk about the colony regulating the effect of the toxic substance by taking in less of it is far fetched, as parts of the study results have been selectively ignored by Gavin.


And did anybody else here notice that Gavin was economical with the truth again?
Jon?
Nellie?

Where's your scientific scrutiny?

----------


## Neils

Funny, when you read the bits you didn't highlight it appears to match what Gavin said. Even when you read the bits you did highlight but use the rest as context it still appears to match what Gavin said.

There's a self correcting mechanism in play here. Bees affected coming back to the hive don't dance as much as those who aren't affected. So the rest of the colony gets directed to forage that isn't treated.

Now the report says "24h after treatment". That's ambiguous as far as I'm concerned. Does it mean up to 24 hours, at least 24 hours? The wider context which you choose not to highlight states a temporary effect. Now I've not actually had the time to read this yet, I've been busy so I'm purely responding to what's been written here rather than the full study so if I take your interpretation at face value and simply respond to what you've written/quoted I'll do the same for Gavin who states the bees were given 20 times a field realistic dose. Yet they still only exhibited a temporary effect and part of that temporary effect was not communicating that forage to the rest of the colony.

----------


## Jon

Nice touch - the use of red ink and bold for all the stupid people who use this forum.




> Where's your scientific scrutiny?


Another study which finds unequivocally that poison is poisonous at high doses, in this case 10-20 times field realistic.
Useful to know

----------


## Stromnessbees

> Nice touch - the use of red ink and bold for all the stupid people who use this forum.
> 
>  Another study which finds unequivocally that poison is poisonous at high doses, in this case 10-20 times field realistic.
> Useful to know


Jon, instead of replying to my serious concerns about Gavin's  misrepresentation of this study you choose to point out my use of red ink  and bold letters. This was only done to highlight the areas of  contradiction, btw.

You are now sinking just as low as Gavin who has taken to pointing out all my typos - but nobody else's it seems - while still making plenty of spellling mistakes himself.

Are you still claiming to be neutral in this debate?

----------


## Neils

And instead of replying to my far more reasonable reply than is warranted you chose to have another go at both Jon and Gavin instead. Ms Pot I fear you complain too much about the kettles right now. So I'm done responding because it's finally, finally sunk into my thick skull that given the chance between a discussion and a poo flinging contest you'll race for the monkey suit every time and it's getting boring.

----------


## Jon

> Are you still claiming to be neutral in this debate?


For your point of view it is not a debate - it is a campaign to get neonicotinoids banned.
You have already decided that is what you want, so the exercise from you point of view is to cherrypick, cut and paste, bold and highlight, post clips from youtube and links to websites which campaign against pesticides. In short, a low brow tabloid approach based on the idiosyncratic style of borderbeeman.

Fair enough, each to their own, but I think in a different way.
I am prepared to change my mind as evidence changes.
I have already moved from a position similar to the one you hold now, based on an impartial evaluation of the evidence, and I would be quite prepared to change position again should compelling evidence be presented that neonicotinoids are a big problem for bees.

I think they can be highly dangerous in certain situations and there is no doubt that planter dust is lethal to bees.
The overwhelming evidence around seed treatments is that they are not causing a major problem through pollen or nectar at the levels typically found and foraged by honeybees..
If insecticides from whatever class are used, it is critical to work out which are more dangerous than others to non target species - homo sapiens for example.

You clearly see this as a crusade whereas I see it as an exercise in gathering evidence. That's where we differ.

----------


## Stromnessbees

> For your point of view it is not a debate - it is a campaign to get neonicotinoids banned.
> You have already decided that is what you want, so the exercise from you point of view is to cherrypick, cut and paste, bold and highlight, post clips from youtube and links to websites which campaign against pesticides. In short, a low brow tabloid approach based on the idiosyncratic style of borderbeeman.
> 
> Fair enough, each to their own, but I think in a different way.
> I am prepared to change my mind as evidence changes.
> I have already moved from a position similar to the one you hold now, based on an impartial evaluation of the evidence, and I would be quite prepared to change position again should compelling evidence be presented that neonicotinoids are a big problem for bees.
> 
> I think they can be highly dangerous in certain situations and there is no doubt that planter dust is lethal to bees.
> The overwhelming evidence around seed treatments is that they are not causing a major problem through pollen or nectar at the levels typically found and foraged by honeybees..
> ...


Jon, I used to be genuinely neutral in my attitude to these pesticides, as all my older forum posts will prove. 
It's only the fierce reaction that I received on this forum when I voiced modest concerns about pesticides and GM that made me research the topic.

What I found is that especially on this forum, but also in other places, like BeeL, there is a huge campaign ongoing, downplaying the effects of these pesticides on bees.

In the light of that I have decided to speak out against the deception and to call for a ban of these products. 


You claim to have read most of the relevant studies on neonicotinoid toxicity. This one has proven more than 10 years ago that neonics have detrimental effects on bees even in doses less than 1/1000th of the LD50 in chronic exposure of just a few days:




> To test chronic toxicity, worker bees were fed sucrose solutions containing 0.1, 1, and 10 mg/L of imidacloprid and its metabolites for 10 d. Fifty percent mortality was reached at approximately 8 d. 
> 
> Hence, considering that sucrose syrup was consumed at the mean rate of 12 ml/d and per bee, after an 8-d period the cumulated doses were approximately 0.01, 0.1, and 1 ng/bee (0.1, 1, and 10 mg/kg). 
> 
> Thus, all tested compounds were toxic at doses 30 to 3,000 (olefin), 60 to 6,000 (imidacloprid), 200 to 20,000 (5-OH-imidacloprid), and *over 1,000 to 100,000* (remaining metabolites) times lower than those required to produce the same effect in acute  intoxication studies. 
> 
> For all products tested, bee mortality was induced only 72 h after the onset of intoxication.


_

DISCREPANCY BETWEEN ACUTE AND CHRONIC TOXICITY INDUCED BY
IMIDACLOPRID AND ITS METABOLITES IN APIS MELLIFERA
SE´ VERINE SUCHAIL, DAVID GUEZ, and LUC P. BELZUNCES*_


All the evidence is there, but you choose to ignore it.

Claiming to be neutral is not the same as being neutral.

----------


## Stromnessbees

> Funny, when you read the bits you didn't highlight it appears to match what Gavin said. Even when you read the bits you did highlight but use the rest as context it still appears to match what Gavin said.
> 
> There's a self correcting mechanism in play here. Bees affected coming back to the hive don't dance as much as those who aren't affected. So the rest of the colony gets directed to forage that isn't treated.
> 
> *Now the report says "24h after treatment". That's ambiguous as far as I'm concerned. Does it mean up to 24 hours, at least 24 hours?* The wider context which you choose not to highlight states a temporary effect. Now I've not actually had the time to read this yet, I've been busy so I'm purely responding to what's been written here rather than the full study so if I take your interpretation at face value and simply respond to what you've written/quoted I'll do the same for Gavin who states the bees were given 20 times a field realistic dose. Yet they still only exhibited a temporary effect and part of that temporary effect was not communicating that forage to the rest of the colony.



Nellie, you had not answered my concerns either, instead you tried to  muddy the waters more. 

This question about the 24 hours is ridiculous. Either you can read a scientific study or you can't. 
If you don't understand what's meant by 24 hours you should stay away from trying to interpret science for others.



Anyway, I am looking forward to Gavin's explanation of what he had in mind when he posted his twisted interpretation.

----------


## Jon

> DISCREPANCY BETWEEN ACUTE AND CHRONIC TOXICITY INDUCED BY
> IMIDACLOPRID AND ITS METABOLITES IN APIS MELLIFERA
> SE´ VERINE SUCHAIL, DAVID GUEZ, and LUC P. BELZUNCES*


I read that study years ago. I have the PDF on my computer. One of borderbeeman's favourites. This is like a time warp getting all the cut and paste he did over the internet about 4 years ago.

Have you read it or have you just cut and pasted the abstract? That's a yes or no answer required.

The lab study fed individual bees sucrose spiked with Imidacloprid for 10 days and they died.

And your point is....

That study is 11 years old. 
Noone disputes that neonicotinoids and some of their metabolites kill bees, especially at high concentrations. We all agree on that.
It is generally accepted that the way forward is field studies rather than lab studies - looking at what happens to bee colonies in real life under real foraging conditions. That is where the RFID transmitter work such as the recent studies by Whitehorn et al, Schneider et al and Henry et al are a promising way forward for further study.

Feeding toxin to individual bees in a lab tells very little other than poison is poisonous. Doris, please, we all know that already.

The link I posted to the Xerces report (2012) yesterday discusses the Suchail et al (2001) paper on page 19 with regard to a paper by Schmuck et al (2004) which failed to replicate these results. ie the science is not clear if it cannot be replicated by other independent investigators.

----------


## Neils

> stuff not worth quoting.



Grow up.

----------


## Stromnessbees

> Originally Posted by *Stromnessbees*  
>                  stuff not worth quoting.
> 			
> 		
> 
>  Grow up.


Nellie, this is not what I said there, do not misquote me!

----------


## Stromnessbees

> I read that study years ago. I have the PDF on my computer. One of borderbeeman's favourites. This is like a time warp getting all the cut and paste he did over the internet about 4 years ago.
> 
> Have you read it or have you just cut and pasted the abstract? That's a yes or no answer required.
> 
> The lab study fed individual bees sucrose spiked with Imidacloprid for 10 days and they died.
> 
> And your point is....


... that your argument of field realistic values is ridiculous in the light of this evidence.

Even minute amounts of these pesticides harm bees, 10 day exposure is fully realistic when you think of the flowering time of an OSR field.


And just as a reminder: scientific research doesn't die of old age!
If we dismissed every study that's older than 10 years we would have hardly any science left.


And by the way: yes, I have read that study and understood its implications, that's why I say we need to ban these pesticides.

----------


## Jon

> And just as a reminder: scientific research doesn't die of old age!


Actually it does in many cases. Apparently the sun does not rotate around the earth and it is said by some that the earth is probably not flat.

And other investigators using the same methodology as Suchail have failed to replicate his findings. (Schmuck et al 2004)

----------


## Stromnessbees

> Actually it does in many cases. Apparently the sun does not rotate around the earth and it is said by some that the earth is probably not flat.
> 
> And other investigators using the same methodology as Suchail have failed to replicate his findings. (Schmuck et al 2004)


That wasn't science, that was religious doctrine that was eventually superceded by science. 

And you are welcome to link to the study you are quoting, I'm happy to evaluate it. 


Anyway, with all these comments you are just trying to distract from the fact that Gavin has been caught red handed twisting science and to make these pesticides appear less harmful than they are. 

You and Nellie failed to point out and correct the contradiction, even after I showed you what was going on. This makes you complicit in the deception. 

May I ask for your motives for all this?

----------


## Jon

Doris. Keep your slurs to yourself. 
People are sick of it.
You have not pointed out any contradictions and you have failed to show anyone 'what is going on'

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15499497

Shmuck et al (2004) had 4 independent labs replicate the study by Suchail et al., three in Germany and one in the UK.
They failed to replicate his findings.
The no observed effect level for Imidacloprid was 20 ppb.
The level of Imidacloprid found in pollen and nectar is 1-5 ppb.
Only at 50 ppb and 100 ppb was mortality greater than controls.

----------


## Stromnessbees

> Doris. Keep your slurs to yourself. 
> People are sick of it.
> You have not pointed out any contradictions and you have failed to show anyone 'what is going on'


Actually, slurs are your speciality:

Every time you mention somebody who disagrees with you, like Graham White (borderbeeman), Eric McArthur or even Walter Haefeker, the president of the German Professional Beekeepers's Association, you put on a nasty, discrediting tone, which is absolutely not fit for a decent forum and scientific discussion.   

Either tidy up your act and try to be civil, or quit.

----------


## Neils

I've had enough of this, I'm closing this thread. This stops *now*.

This is a suggestion to everyone to put the keyboard down, take a deep breath and start playing nice.

This area of the forum has traditionally been more loosely moderated than the rest, but the basic rules remains.

If you can't be polite, don't post. There are plenty of other forums across the internet for wanna-be flame warriors to ply their trade, this isn't one of them.

----------

