Hi Scott and everyone,
Honey bees do collect pollen from corn.  This leads to bee kills when
care is not taken when using insecticides on corn.  Actually, with
proper timeing of the sprays and careful selection of chemicals actual
damage to honey bee colonies is rare just like Dave Green says if they
follow the label they don't kill the bees.

On the issue of BT corn pollen.  It should not have any effect on
honey bees as the toxin only effects catapillars.  In fact we used to
have a BT product that was sprayed directly on combs to protect them
from wax moth - it had no effects on the bees only the wax moth
catapillars.  So I don't think there will be any problem with bees
collecting the pollen.  Of course there are other issues and one of
them is that the very widespread use of the BT toxin will result in
resistance to it by the target pests so we will loose BT as an
effective insecticide.  BT has been a mainstay of the organic growers
for a long time and they don't have anything as selective and
effective to replace it with.

blane


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Blane White
MN Dept of Agriculture
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