?> 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. *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm