Shock value in headlines

[Bakersdozen]

http://www.organicauthority.com/struggling-honey-bees-are-making-poisonous-honey-pesticide-residue-widespread-study-finds/

My first reaction to the headline was that this is terrible PR for honey producers.  Upon reading about this "widespread study",  we find that the study was only done in Massachusetts. It says nothing about human consumption being impacted, but it does support concerns the honey bee industry have expressed for several years regarding neonicotinoids.  The last two lines actually state the health risks to humans.  Almost an after thought. 
It's the World Wide Web where anyone can be an expert.

[pistolpete]

expert:    x : an unknown variable, spurt: to spout in small quantities

[tecumseh]

I think this is a study carried out by a Dr Alex Lu who is a professor at Harvard.  Some of Dr Lu prior work in regards to neonics has been highly criticized as being unrealistic (peer review really can and does divide real science folks from the wanna-bees and in a much more obvious way than some might imagine).  In his prior work he was basically exposing lab bees to concentration of neonics that would never be seen in nature and then drawing conclusion based upon these unrealistic levels of exposure.

[Les]

She is a little dated on her information.  England has just lifted the temporary ban for neonics for "some farmers" in "some areas", sadly.

[riverbee]

last year i culled some brood frames to cycle them out, a number of those frames contained honey, and/or honey residue. i fed the frames back to the bees in the fall. i used an uncapping plane to salvage the wax, and what i couldn't slice off with the plane, i sent through the solar wax melter.

what wax i salvaged from planing off, i washed using a paint strainer, a five gallon bucket and a garden hose.  i usually wash wax cappings from a honey harvest this way (after being run through a cappings basket) and wash until the water runs clear; let dry, then run the wax through the solar melter.
after rinsing a number of times, the honey residue began to dissipate and i started getting a lime green color going in the water.  this took forever to wash completely from the wax, and there was still a slight lime green color to the water that remained. i let soak in warmer water several times and rinsed again.

what was in the wax? i am certain the wax held some sort of residue, pesticide perhaps?

headlines like this speak for themselves and hype the public, but i do think there is something to be said about pesticide/insecticide/mite treatment and whatever else residue that remains in combs, and why it is important for us as beekeepers to cycle out our brood frames from time to time.

[apisbees]

I have had wax show green when melting and pressing brood combs. Especially if I melt Them down in a water bath. I think it is from the water washing the dark staining of the cocoons and propolise that the bees use to polish the cells.
I prefer to melt it placed in a sack, heat the wax and honey, draining off the honey as the wax is melting. Any wax that comes out with the honey quickly solidifies and is returned to the wax tank. Once the wax is all liquid it is drained off and the screw press is used to press the wax out of the bag of slum gum. Rendering wax this way I find the wax will be a darker yellow than melting honey cappings, but they don't turn green like they do when water is used.