Bees and imidacloprid

I don't mean to hijack this thread but the use of imidacloprid in my area is astounding and curious to here others on this. In Ma if you looked at map of the eastern part of the state and colored in each property that is treated with imidacloprid it would be alarming.From lawns to trees most properties are being treated. When I drive around in every neighborhood,office park, and virtually any were their is a green space that is being maintained I will find a lawn care flag or tree service tag. Having worked for numerous lawn and tree companies and talking with others in the industry this is a product that every one has in their chem shed. Granted most people in this area hire at least one company to treat something on the property and many have both tree and lawn services. This is not even taking into consideration the do it yourself homeowner.So what's it like in your area?
 
I would like to find out how much of the stuff gets put into the pollen.

Some trees really blow off an incredible amount of pollen that just gets everywhere. Even if the bees are not feeding directly on the flowers as there is no nectar, there will be tree pollen in all of the flowers. Unselective wind sex. The trees dont care who they do it with. The bee gets caught in the middle. love triangle poisoned.
 
how many times do we got to learn this lesson. Personally I think we should really think hard about continuing use of this drug. We have to eat too and without bees it will be tough. We will have to pollinate everything by hand. That would be tedious to say the least.

Is main-lining pretty little hemlocks and ashes on some millionaires exotic hardwood palace built on farmland or mountaintop worth the cost to we?
 
Interesting, latest theory that I have heard. Cell-phones. Crossing up their navigational abilities. Could be.
Cell phones are already terrible for the world through the harvest of the precious metal that runs them. Coltan which is mainly found in the jungles of the Congo and Rwanda. Pitched battles are being fought for control of this mineral, poaching and forest destruction are rampant around rapidly expanding mining facilities.
Now they could also be to blame for the loss of bees. Hmmm. What would we ever do without our cellphones though?
 
It wouold be best for orchardsto treat w/ bee friendly pesticides since they count on the bees for pollination.
 
There's many things that can be better and even more that we should be doing, but we've entrapped ourselves on a very dependent and destructive mass scale. There's plenty that we find out is wrong, but even as we do there are people who fight tooth and nail to insist that everything's allright and we're going to be fine.

Some changes are needing to happen, and in some cases, it's way too late.

The way we think, the way we produce and the way it's economy, not reality that leads us to here. If certain research calls to question the logic in certain methods we practice, then it's criminal to politicize a response designed only to prolong the profit, and the agony and mess it causes and to trash those prophetic data instead of heeding them.

Bees of themselves we can't think are that an important role in the big picture, but they are and their losses won't be just a terrible inconvenience, it'll be catastrophic and one step gone in a very fragile system that's dependent on everything that exists.

So much for a benevolent God or religion that distances us from the reality of being, part of the reason we've been so ignorant of the very thing that we're part of. Now some prices we find we're going to have to pay. Bees are but one. IMHO.
 
its interesting the reaction I hear from a lot of arborists when I have brought up the possibility of imidacloprid killing the bees. Its sort of an "oh well, we use it but its really the lawn care people or the agriculture people's use of the product that is probably causing the damage to the bees. our usage is purely beneficial."
There are a lot of questions yet, but i just do not think we should go on putting this stuff out there when the consequences may be so dramatic. I think this is not a lets wait around till we know for sure type of deal, its a lets do everything we can right now, lets drop everything because this is a priority of the most fundemental type. If there is any possibility that imidacloprid is the culprit, it should be removed from the environment imediatly. If things dont improve then it maybe something else.
 
We're fools to think that what we pump out into the world won't get back to us somehow. As a friend of mine says, "I don't advocate the use of any pesticides, fungicides, or suicides."
 
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