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« on: March 16, 2017, 05:15:38 PM »
Imidacloprid kills leaf miners. Certainly when you feed almost any insecticide directly to a bee it's deleterious--bees are highly susceptible to many classes of insecticides. However, imidacloprid, applied to the root system of a citrus tree seems to be fairly safe if used according to the label. The Florida citrus industry uses incredible amounts of it, and they do not see bee kills. The so called "sudden death" syndrome of bee colonies, which was at one time attributed to imidacloprid, now seems to have nothing to do with that material. An interesting aspect of imidacloprid is that it does not move very well into flowers. That is a real problem in the cut flower industry, in that you can't get it to control thrips or other flower feeding insects - it just won't go there. But in the case of the citrus industry, that is a good thing--it doesn't seem to affect the bees collecting pollen from our citrus flowers. (Taken from notes received by Dr. Malcolm Manners)