?> I think its reasonable to say (from those on the list ) that bees do poorly 
on canola ( Allen dicks diary information) but seem to recover after removed 
from *Canola.*

Actually, my bees do great on canola, or did when I was commercial, (that was 
seven years ago) and seem to now for the many beekeepers I inspect, but my bees 
and those of other beekeepers I know  did  not do not so well when trucked 
annually to the canola pollination and back, for reasons which are unclear. 
The guys local to the pollination that I inspect seem to have pretty 
good-looking bees these days, and they are in a district where beekeeping was 
almost sprayed to extinction in the past.

The canola *pollination* to which I refer crowds bees onto fields with 
alternating strips of male and female flowers of two varieties grown in 
isolation on irrigated fields, and provides the seed for normal commercial 
hybrid canola crops.  Only the latter seed is used for oil, meal, etc..  The 
former is too valuable for that.

On the other hand commercial hybrid canola crops are grown all over Alberta, 
and when we look out the window in summer we see yellow in all directions. 
Canola is a major honey source and Alberta bees seem to thrive on it.  It 
yields huge crops of mild white honey.  The same cannot be said of the old 
rapeseed varieties which preceded canola and which were implicated in wintering 
losses and horrible, unsalable honey at times.

As for effects of seed treatments in either case, I cannot comment other than 
to say that if there is an effect, it is either subtle or local and still needs 
to be discovered.  These products are still quite new and we may not have seen 
the build-up in the soil yet.  However, the far south of Alberta which, for a 
decade or two, was very inhospitable to bees due to heavy spraying is now home 
to many apparently healthy bees.  We have birds again in summer.  I can 
remember years when birds were dying everywhere due to spray and the fish in 
the local dam were killed by Furadan runoff. 

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