The paper is short and clear. It's worth reading, and worth thinking about how it could have been differently so as to be more conclusive, and how a followup study might be improved.<p>1) There is no mention of whether the people caring for the bees were blinded as to control versus treatment. This is simple, and should have been done if it was not.<p>2) There were only 6 hives in each treatment group (control, imadacloprid, and clothianidin). There are always constraints, but more hives would be a much stronger study.<p>3) Lu's previous study found 100% mortality with 1/7th the dose of imadacloprid. Why did they increase the dosage for this experiment?<p>4) There are 3 apiary locations, but they don't report the breakdown per apiary. Did all the apiaries experience approximately equal losses in the neonicotinoid hives?<p>5) Is there a "file drawer" effect here? If there had been one fewer treatment hive collapse and one more control collapse, would this study have been published?<p>6) Were any other studies performed? Or started and abandoned? I'd presume not, but it would be great to have a clear statement from the authors.<p>7) Is it reasonable to assume that the dosage is spread evenly across all bees? If the clothianidin LD50 is 3.4 ng/bee, and they are administering .74 ng/bee/day, it seems likely that some bees will die from acute poisoning.<p>8) They don't breakdown the numbers per hive, and instead give averages that include abandoned hives. Were the surviving non-abandoned neonicotinoid hives any weaker than the control hives?<p>My hope would be that the authors would provide the full data if requested, but I'm constantly surprised that journals don't require this. Without additional information, this seems like an interesting exploratory study that neither confirms or denies any specific hypothesis.<p>I'd guess that there are enough beekeepers interested in future studies that a larger scale study would be possible. Many bees are fed over the winter with sugar, to compensate for the honey that is taken. Do you suppose that there are beekeepers that would agree to a blind dosing of their bees if the lab were to provide the (possibly poisoned) sugar?