Hi There,
There is certainly an abundance of Canola in Victoria this year.
A few years back I was asked to supply a few hives for a trial patch that a local farmer was running.
We ran a couple of test patches one with the hives smack bang in the middle of the field (in an un-sown square) and one with hive along the side. (the first patch yielded more canola) We prepared the hives in autumn by feeding them up with sugawater and essential oils (prob to late for that this year) so we started off with hives that were rearing to go.
Before we took them out we removed 90% of the winter honey stores. added fresh plastics to the bottom supers (I run 3x 10frame deeps with 9 frames in this type of crop). Moved all brood up to the third super, put the queen and queen excluder above the first and ran a double honey box to restrict brood levels. My strain of bee goes broodier otherwise.
They go nuts when the weather comes on and will require plenty of inspections and a regular swap out of supers. BEE WARNED I only used plastic foundation in wood frame, due to the fact canola candy's quite quickly or seems to be dam hard to extract. For me its just easier to scrape and crush off some of the frames. (not my preferred method) ended up creaming most of this stuff.
Oh and watch the pesticide, they tend to spray during the peak flowing periods, Which means more trips out to pick up the bees.
Its prob not the guy your working for that you need to be concerned about with this more so the guy over the fence or down the road.
Nothing is worse than a dead hive a ruined gear...
Good luck