We've just completed a Good Laboratory Audit of a major study of residue levels of clothianidin in corn and canola.  We for each we looked at bee-collected pollen from 30 fields, sampled early, mid-, and late- in the pollen shed period.  Not surprisingly, bees didn't much like corn.  They did show attraction to canola.  We presented this data a couple of years ago at both National Bee Conferences.

However, the question raised was about canola.   From our report:



"Canola pollen wascommon in bee-collected pollen samples.  The mean percentage (fraction) canola in all samples was72 percent, and was relatively consistent across (all three) sampling periods.  The greatest difference occurred in the firstsamples which averaged about 10 percent less canola than the latersamples.  No samples contained less than10 percent canola pollen and the greatest concentration of samples containedmore than 80 percent canola."   Interestingly, we also found that occasional fields had 99-100% canola pollen, but even in areas of side by side canola fields, bees still found and brought home pollen from other plants.


 
J.J. Bromenshenk
Bee Alert
Missoula, Mt
 


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