# More ... > Beekeeping and the environment >  Is this the worst science yet on neonics?

## gavin

And it comes under the banner of Harvard.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/environ...hows-1-3405681

'Man poisons bee hives with high doses of insecticides - continues to do so after being pilloried for his bad science previously'

That would be my headline.

From the Scotsman:

'Prof Lus latest findings, published in the Bulletin of Insectology,  have shown low doses of a second neonicotinoid, clothianidin, had the  same negative effect on bees. He said: We demonstrated again in this  study that neonicotinoids are highly likely to be responsible for  triggering CCD in honey bee hives that were healthy prior to the arrival  of winter. '

Appalling stuff.  The amounts used approached the known LD50 levels, the levels at which half the insects exposed in short-term trials died.  Amount about a hundred-fold higher than they may be getting from OSR, which my bees are guzzling enthusiastically at the moment when the sun comes out.  But these days at Harvard you can poison bees with known toxic levels of insecticide and claim that you are revealing CCD.  

Randy Oliver on his earlier work:
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/the-...noids-and-ccd/

Jim Fischer on Bee-L today:

Medhat pointed out a NEW paper by our man at Harvard, Dr. Chensheng Lu.

http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org...-125-130lu.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/lgvec22

we administered  258  µg  of  imidacloprid  or  clothianidin  in  1.9
liter  (0.5  gallon)  of  sucrose  water  and HFCS  to  the  treated
colonies  each  week,  respectively, for  thirteen  consecutive  weeks
ending  on  September 17th 2012.

Back of the envelope time:

258 µg in 1.9 liters of feed = 258/1.9 = 135.78 µg/L.

1 µg/L =  1 ppb, so 135 µg/L =  135 ppb

Bayers own FAQ says that the acute oral LD50 for Imidacloprid is 0.005
µg/bee, which equals 192 ppb
http://bee-quick.com/reprints/imd/BayerFAQ.pdf‎
http://tinyurl.com/kjrrsoh

Is the difference between 192 ppb and 135 ppb worth pondering?  Or even
discussing?  This looks like a fatal dose level for almost, but not quite
half the bees who are fed the dose.

For clothiandin, the EPA says that the LD50 > 0.0439 µg/bee, roughly 10x the
LD50 for Imidacloprid.

http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/chem_sea...on/fs_PC-04430
9_30-May-03.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/kq2j8qt

So, my rough calculations say that  the study should show very bad news for
Imidacloprid-treated hives and perhaps some brood impact on the
Clothiandin-treated hives, but certainly less mortality.  While they did NOT
kill the Imidacloprid-treated hives anywhere near as quickly as I would have
expected, they did see worse results for Imidacloprid.

Note that the LD50 is the dose where half the bees die quickly, so if you
get anywhere near the LD50 dose, you should still see significant acute
mortality.

"The Return of Dr. Lu"... too bad Vincent Price has died, as he would be the
best person to play the lead role in the film version of something with that
sort of a name.

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## Jon

It is probably the second worst study. The first one he did is the worst.

The usual suspects are quick to jump on the bandwagon without any real understanding of the junk science.

Damian in the Guardian

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## fatshark

Jon is right … not the worst, and not the last. 

Bulletin of Insectology … Impact Factor ~0.375. My loo roll is read - and cited - by more scientists than that. Impact Factors are not a great indication of scientific worth of individual manuscripts - you can get worthless papers in journals with high impact factors, but you generally do not get stellar papers in impact factors that are close to zero. 

Note also the figure legend in the Guardian article … "Colony Collapse Disorder, reported in the US, has now spread to the UK."

er, no.

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## Jon

Damian is the guy who frequently confuses bumblebee studies with honeybee studies.
His name appears beside almost all the Guardian neonic scare stories.
He hasn't got a clue.

The unfortunate thing is that this pointless study is already all over Facebook, linked to petitions, on the tree hugger websites etc.
Loads of beekeepers will take it seriously.

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## Jon

Randy Oliver's review of this paper

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## gavin

Doesn't hold back, does he?!

Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk

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## drumgerry

Cracking stuff!  He's the main reason I have a subscription to the ABJ.

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## fatshark

Also worth reading is Alan Dove …

On the original paper and the most recent one.

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## Little_John

> Randy Oliver's review of this paper


"The problem lies in that Lus research isnt about trying to learn something about CCD; rather, it is to support a preconceived agenda ..."

Which is exactly the allegations now being levelled at researchers (and the BBC for their biased reporting) for omitting data which would favour 'the opposition'.  Seems that some scientists have forgotten about impartiality and the search for truth, and have become activists instead. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/scienc...cle4091344.ece

Worrying times - who do we now believe ?

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## Greengage

Tks for the links facinating reading.

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## The Drone Ranger

It mentioned Phil Mcanespie as former SBA president
who is it now then ?
Behind the curve as always me

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## Feckless Drone

> It mentioned Phil Mcanespie as former SBA president
> who is it now then ?


DR - if you join us at the ESBA meetings I'll tell you.

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## gavin

LOL!  Don't tell DR, but we're planning visiting his site for one of our summer excursions next year  :Wink:   <that winking thing means I'm kidding, DR>

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## SDM

Pretty much every scientific journal is owned by Elsevier. You'll find a few board members from pesticide producers are also on Elsevier's board.
It's the same in human medicine Smith gkaxo Kline's ex ceo was also ethics ceo for Elsevier's " British medical journal".  Of course there's an agenda.

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## gavin

What are you saying - that Lu's excellent work had to go to a diddy journal because of the widespread conspiracy in the scientific press?!

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## Jon

A lot of bee research including the pesticide research gets published in PLOS
If the science does not support a preconceived position the next step is often to invoke a conspiracy theory involving Big Ag, Big Pharma blah blah blah.
Very lazy thinking imho.

Lu is feted by the anti pesticide campaign groups even though his work is demonstrably complete rubbish whereas serious work get written off as a conspiracy between science and vested interests.

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## Greengage

I noticed this article on Trinity news and Events from April 2015 that bees showed a preference for food which contained pesticides: when the bees were given a choice between sugar solution, and sugar solution containing neonicotinoids, they chose the neonicotinoid-laced food. Professor of Botany and prinnciple investigator at the school of natural sciences Jane Stout said:
http://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articl...3#.VT4mb5O3G4c

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## busybeephilip

makes interesting reading

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ature14414.pdf

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## Jon

One of the folk involved in that study did a presentation on the work at the UBKA conference last March.
Interesting indeed.
Gavin was there.

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## prakel

Well, as we're back on the neonic trail...

*Apicultural Conference Tackles Neonic Issue: ABJ Extra News, August 20, 2015*

http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=...e&e=57f94334d8

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## James O

Not to forget this one as well:

*Evidence for pollinator cost and farming benefits of neonicotinoid seed coatings on oilseed rape*
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep12574

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## The Drone Ranger

I don't know who is right but I think no neonics means more spraying judging by what I see and read

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## Greengage

The more I read on this topic the more confusing it gets, All insects play their part in the food chain but some not to the beniifit of us the food consumers, so farmers have to maximise their yield and protect their crops from whatever be it Locusts in China, Rats in Vietnam, Frogs in Australia and Greenfly or whatever in Ireland, As beekeepers we also use chemicals to threat our bees to protect them from Mites. If the chemical is sprayed on the seed and taken up by the plant then ingested by say a honeybee if it does not kill it, It could be possible we ingested  through honey, Ok it may be very diluted but if its bad for the insect it must be bad for us, unless in years to come it proves invaluable in that it cure cancer or  diabetes, After all we take warafin to thin blood in humans, we also drink flouriide and chloroform, Oh I just dont know.........

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## Jon

It is rather complicated, that's the point. The single issue campaigners tend to present a one dimensional view of things.
Neonics are neither totally benign nor totally catastrophic as some would have you believe.
Re toxicity, one selling point of neonics is that they have far lower mammalian toxicity than their predecessors such as Carbamates and Organophosphates.

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## Greengage

I see Dr Lu has another paper out on neonicotinoid insecticides, this time Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com takes issue with his findings, I like Randy Oilver's  writings on scientific papers he seems to make it easy to follow and talks common sense.
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/a-re...massachusetts/

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## The Drone Ranger

He doesn't always make sense Greengage 
Americans are way behind when it comes to organic acids and thymol etc
Randy Olivers claims that Apiguard kills brood are not what most people find
Plus he seems keen on Exomite Apis type powder thymol which definitely does kill some brood in my experience
I am not saying that just to disagree I find a lot he says sensible but some of it is just wrong and he gradually backtracks

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## Greengage

Most scientific articles are written by scientists for scientists and read by scientists in scientific journals that never se the light of day outside universities or scientific journals, that for me would cost a small fortune to subscribe too. I was not saying he made sense I was refering to the articles, they are easily read, you can make up your own mind wheather he is right or wrong. I dont know if Apiguard is right or wrong, I have been told it affects the queen laying, it can kill weak bees, It can kill brood. I think if you talk to 10 beekeepers you will get 12 different answers, As Donald Rumsfeld was quoted as saying "there are no "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know"
I also note Randy Oliver had some pics of Workers removing brood which he claims were killed by Apiguard.

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## Jon

Some colonies do react badly to Apiguard but most are ok. I get the odd one which uncaps almost all the existing sealed brood and removes the pupae. You see heaps of white pupal debris on the insert tray, legs and antennae.

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## mbc

Thymol is toxic to bees to only a slightry lesser degree than it is to varroa, I like to see a little debris thrown out when thymol is applied initially or I doubt it's efficiency at killing varroa. Another facet of this is if Miller type feeders are used some of the more badly affected firefighter bees which dealt with the thymol often crawl to places like the feeder trough to die. As with most "soft" chemical treatments it's a case of cruel to be kind or trying to do more good than harm. I have no doubt thymol can set colonies back with a combination of killed brood (neglected during the time the thymol fumes are overwhelming?) Queens going off lay , and some bees dying due to extreme exposue the thymol, but for me it's still my weapon of choice, when amitras resistance becomes widespread tons of beekeepers will lose bees, resistance to thymol is much more unlikely.

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## Jon

Yep, lesser of two evils.

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## Greengage

Prof Dave Goulson and his views https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDkp...ature=youtu.be

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## mbc

Good lecture that, ta for posting.

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