Hi all I live near a railway line and have always marvelled at how the herbicides sprayed to kill grass and stuff on the sidelines never kills the lucerne(alfalfa) that has grown there as a result of seeds spilling of fodder being railed around. It turns out the the genes for resistance to herbicides have been cloned into many plants (i don't know if this alfalfa is of such a variety but it certainly is tough). As a result framers can spray herbicides on their crops to kill weeds. Now my question is, has this cloning been done on bees? It seems it would be quite easy say to breed drosophila (fruit flies) in the presence of various common pesticides, and seeing as the drosophila genome is as far as I know sequenced, to find out which genes have mutated to give the resistance and cut them out and put them into one of the sections of the A.m genome that have been sequenced. (so that it is put somewhere that will not break one of the important genes in the host). Then theoretically if everything goes right one would be able to produce huge numbers of cloned bees with pesticide resistance with no real danger of it ever being a bad move as bees live in single colonies and the normal methods for exterminating them do not of neccesity need conventional pesticides - ie can gas them. (It would be bad to put the same genes into say a flie as pesticides are useful in killing flies which lay eggs all over the place and don't make hives - wow imagine that - funnycomb) If one put in such genes for resistance it would mean that of neccesity they would have to be able to metabolise the poisons as well, as that genes would code for the enzymes to do that - in other words it would increase the safety of the honey being sold as well. If it did not, at least it would be useful for pollination. Is such research being done?? Just a thought. Keep well Garth --- Garth Cambray Kamdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Apis melifera capensis Grahamstown 800mm annual precipitation 6139 Eastern Cape South Africa Phone 27-0461-311663 3rd year Biochemistry/Microbiology Rhodes University In general, generalisations are bad. Interests: Flii's and Bees. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post in no way reflect those of Rhodes University.