Imidacloprid
320083817243-0001@t-online.de (Sun, 26 Oct 2003 14:51:49 PST)

Dear All,

After reading your contributions about Imidacloprid I feel like adding another
point of view. It is a product by Bayer and sold under the brand name of
Provado here in Germany. It is relatively new and indeed is very effective. It
has no smell (many pesticides are mixed with an agent that makes them smell
"poisonous" in order to increase the safety of the product) is not visible
after spraying and has not done any leaf damage even to hairy Gesneriad leaves.
It is extremely long lasting after spraying, one spraying is said to be
effective for a "considerable time" but the instruction on the box does not say
for how long exactly. It says strictly one treatment only but scale insects may
not be fully controlled (yes, I agreee)
I spoke quite enthusiastically to a professional gardener about this product as
I thought I had found the perfect cure for all the pests. But he warned me
saying that by eyperience such potent products will sooner or later develop
resistences in many insects and for this reason it is better to use other, less
potent products in between.
Besides this it is dangerous do bees and must not be sprayed onto flowering
plants (it does not say for how long before flowering) The touble with
bee-toxic products is that it may kill the bee but even worse if the bee is not
killed it will carry the poison into the honey....

All the best! Uli