News stories related to honeybee health the past few
weeks are all over the map. Some headlines claim that new research proves that
honeybees are dying off because of pesticides, while others say honeybees are
doing just fine. But reality is different than either scenario. Beekeepers
surely have their challenges, but banning pesticide’s won’t help them or their
bees.
Much of the media “bad news” comes from a recent Harvard
University study, which some say
proves that a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids are to blame for colony
collapse disorder…….In this study, researchers fed bees a relatively high level
of the pesticides, which may not be a good reflection how the chemicals impacts
bees in the real world. All this proves is that high pesticide levels can harm
bees, it doesn’t prove that actual real-life exposures have the same impact.
Dennis vanEngelsdorp, who is the director of a honeybee research initiative
called Bee Informed, pointed that out in a New
York Times story, which notes:
Dr. vanEngelsdorp said that Dr. Lu and his colleagues
gave the bees doses far beyond what they would encounter in nature, and over
longer periods of time, so the new study only shows that “high doses of
‘neonics’ kill bees — which is not surprising…..To Read More….
My Take – Another study that wasted - who know how much
money – to prove something we already knew going back to the days of Philippus
Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, more commonly known as Paracelsus,
who in the 1500’s stated that which is foundational to the understanding of toxicology; the dose
makes the poison.
This just another “study” with a conclusion in search of
data, much like the fraudulent studies done with DDT that deliberated withheld
calcium from the diets of the birds being studied and then claimed DDT was
responsible for their weak bones and broken eggs.
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