>I failed to find even one case where honeybees were
working the blooms of any of the numerous soybean fields
I checked.

Did you get to the field at 8 am and monitor all day?
Also bees work soybeans when soil conditions and humidity are right. In fact 
the bees work most plants only at certain times of the day. However in the 
summer the late foragers will many times spend the night in the field.


>the blooms of weeds growing along the margins of
soybeans like this:

These "weeds" we beekeepers call HONEY PLANTS. Some of these produce quite a
bit of honey. If I was with you I could name each plant.

The bees working these plants are dead with crop dusting in daytime.  Bees
were in the fields you were looking at and can switch from those "weeds' to
soybeans in minutes.

Close-up view of the soybean blossoms with
no pollinators present:
http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87/4ALC/ffc.jpg

I have fifty years of watching bees work soybeans although at times the bees
for whatever reason do not work. Most likely because a nectar source the
bees like better is in bloom.

American Honey plants (page 377)
"The honey from this source is light in color , of particular but pl;easing
flavor and rather thin and light in body"

Three pages of testimonials on bees working soybeans.

At a Delta Bee location I stopped at in south Missouri I looked at a yard of
eighty hives ( yes 80 hives in a single yards) on soybeans and all the hives
had at least three supers of soybean honey on.

In Quincy, Illinois Dennis Simmons kept yards of forty to fifty hives on
soybeans with similar honey production.

 Both these locations were soybeans as far as the eye could see in all
directions.

>Close-up view of honeybee visiting the milkweed
flowers growing along the margin of the blooming soybean
field:

Crop duster will kill these bees.

Paul said:
>Evidently honeybees rarely
visit soybean blooms. So it makes sense to me Minnesota
farmers can legally spray soybean fields in bloom without
being in violation of the label directions.

The purpose of me being on BEE-L is to share information. My response would
be the same whoever did the post. I am not picking on Paul.

Crop dusters are a lazy lot from my experience. Most want a 10am to 4 pm
job. Beekeepers will go along with dusting early in the morning BEFORE the
bees are flying ( hell I am in my office some days at  am so surely the crop
dusters can get up to help "save the bees".) and around  dusk when the bees
*for the most part* are back in the hives.

We are for the most part not wanting to be unreasonable. However in our 
beekeeper numbers are a few bad apples. I have heard stories of crop dusters 
leaving areas of large concentrations of commercial beekeepers.

Paul said:
" so it makes sense to me farmers can legally spray soybean fields in bloom
without being in label violation "

I disagree!

bob



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