imidacloprid would indeed kill bees if applied as the article describes; i don't know how it's marketed agriculturally, but in its home lawn applications it's designed to be applied then immediately soaked into the ground. In such cases, exposure is limited to underground insects, i.e. grubs, mole crickets, etc., the intended targets. I use the stuff from time to time as directed, and have no lack of bees, bumblebees, yellowjackets, flies, sow bugs, cucumber beetles, squash bugs, ladybugs, beetles, mosquitoes, etc. etc. etc. I keep an eye on these things because I'm loath to use "chemicals" at all; i don't even use artificial fertilizers, but when we get a really "grubby" year the damage is so devastating that I have to make an exception.

the thing is, that i use imidacloprid because after some research i concluded that it, and presumably other nicotine derivatives, have the best profile of nontoxicity to critters other than insects, and the least amount of "friendly fire" to desirable insects when used as directed. if farmers were to swear off imidacloprid, i'm pretty sure they wouldn't just go to holistic pest management techniques and accept the losses, they'd switch over to another pesticide which would inevitably be worse. as i alluded to above, the way to cut exposure by bees would be to ensure that it was administered properly; switching to another insecticide won't spare bees, they being insects also.

all that said, i'm not entirely sure the colony colapse disorder can be blamed on imidacloprid; to my admittedly nonexpert knowledge, it hasn't correlated with imidacloprid use either geographically or temporally. so, unless there's been a recent change in the popular methods of application of the stuff to a sloppier process, there's not a lot of reason to draw a direct line to the recent bee die-off. and of course, other candidates for the cause have been brought up in the past few years.

full disclosure: i used to work for bayer for a couple of years, but 1) it wasn't in the agricultural subsidiary or anything to do with pesticides, 2) i came to my conclusion regarding imidacloprid several years before that when researching flea products safe for cats, and 3) in any event bayer laid off my whole department in a fit of executive stupidity, so i'm thinking my conclusions here are not biased pro-Bayer.

what Acorn is to election fraud; i.e. a convenient bit player for rightwingers to point to in an attempt to prevent everyone from noticing that the elephant in the room is a lot bigger than the donkey.

How many $100,000 Freddy Mac mortgage defaults does it take to equal the $700,000,000 Hancock Tower mortgage default?

("fuzzy math! fuzzy math!")

for extra credit: who's in a better position to know whether they are in danger of defaulting; the working class shlubs getting their first house with that $100,000 mortgage, or commercial real estate flipper Broadway Partners Fund Manager, LLC with that $700,000,000 mortgage on the Hancock Tower?

Indeed. For all the whining about the dangers of the doctors working for the government, in fact in Canada the vast majority of doctors have their own private practice or are part of a small group; whereas in the US any physicians who have not incorporated into a larger practice in order to cover the costs of a large and busy collections department fielding the conflicting claim requirements and varying rejections of all the insurers (not to mention trying to collect from the patients who get stuck with the bills when the insurers deny them) have been ordered into group practices by the insurers, who won't contract with individual providers.

for everyone who ever had a positive thought towards the bush administration.

and everybody else too.

i'm gonna go with the story of the guy who never lied to me before.

God made Bible quotations appear where Rummy didn't put them!

i mean, if there is any country that has experience and capacity with their civilian prison population, it's got to be the US.

Is that what they were saying? I thought it was Pussy committee.

And they need to rename themselves and get a new symbol which stresses that strength and unity, which, after all, has been the secret to their past electoral success over the fractured Democrats. Perhaps some metaphor like a bundle of rods, which individually are weak but when bound tightly together are united in strength.

Is that what he said? I thought he said he was a "common 'tater". Now that would make some sense. Big ol' spud.

after duck marriage, the next thing you know, teenagers will be hugging each other in schools.

the issue is, apparently, that however well the technology simlates the parallax part of stereoscopic vision, it can't mimic the effect of objects at different depths requiring your eyes to focus accordingly. most people aren't bothered too much by that, some are.