Hi Allen and All:

Allen wrote that on further investigation he found that indeed the hybrid
canola WAS genetically modified, but he did not see much significance to the
bees.  He and others might be interested in this back article from the New
Scientist:

>Plants that have that have been genetically
>engineered to ward off destructive insects could also
>harm beneficial ones such as bees, shortening their
>lives and impairing their ability to recognise flower
>smells, researchers have found.
>
>Minh-Hà Pham-Delègue of the Laboratory of
>Comparative Invertebrate Neurobiology in
>Bures-sur-Yvette, France, and colleagues in Britain
>and Belgium have investigated the effects of
>engineered rapeseed on pollinating insects. The
>rapeseed contains genes, found naturally in some
>plants, that produce protease inhibitors--proteins that
>interfere with enzymes in the intestinal tracts of
>insects.

>The idea is that beetles and other pests feeding on the
>leaves and stalks of the engineered rapeseed should
>develop a lethal case of indigestion. But bees would
>also be exposed to the destructive proteins, through
>nectar and pollen. "Rapeseed is particularly important
>to bees," says Pham-Delègue. "The plants do not
>depend strictly on bees to pollinate them, but it is the
>first plant to bloom in large quantities in the spring.
>Bees harvest a lot of nectar from them."
>
>The researchers found no protease inhibitors in the
>pollen or nectar of the rapeseed. But they suspect that
>because the proteins are expressed in the leaves and
>stem of the plant throughout its life, they could be
>present in the pollen and nectar at levels too low to be
>detected. If so, they could eventually become
>concentrated in honey stored back at the hive, which
>the bees feed on.
>
>To find out how bees might be affected by high levels
>of protease inhibitors in stored nectar, the researchers
>exposed captive bees to sugar solutions containing up
>to 100 times the concentration of proteins found in
>the tissues of the engineered rapeseed. Bees fed on
>this solution for 3 months died up to 15 days earlier
>than those fed on normal sugar. After 15 days, the
>bees had trouble learning to distinguish between the
>smells of flowers.
>
>The researchers are now studying whether the toxic
>proteins do build up in hives of bees feeding on the
>concentrated sugar solutions and on the transgenic
>plants themselves, and if so, how quickly they
>accumulate. They point out that the engineered
>rapeseed that eventually appears in farmers' fields
>could secrete higher levels of protease inhibitors than
>the plants they tested. Their work is part of a
>three-year project begun last October to evaluate the
>impact of transgenic plants on pollinating insects.
>
>  From New Scientist, 16 August 1997

Regards, Stan