UM scientist shares stories of Rumsfeld phone calls, possible reasons for bee colony collapse

[sabra]

Source: The Missoulian

Researchers at the University of Montana have trained honeybees to safely locate land mines, but were banned from field-testing the bees' prowess overseas by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Senior field researcher Scott Debnam, part of UM's increasingly famous bee project, blew through a long list of fascinating facts about honeybees - and revealed a possible cause for Colony Collapse Disorder just discovered at UM a week ago - during his City Club Missoula presentation Monday.

...

Debnam and others spent 10 months preparing to go overseas to start locating the hidden land mines that threaten literally millions of people worldwide. A week before their scheduled departure, Rumsfeld called to say the mission was off.

Why? If the U.S. showed the world that bees could find land mines, this nation could not then use bees for other defensive - domestic - purposes, Rumsfeld said. In other words, the U.S. doesn't have a domestic land-mine problem, so UM's bees should be used to defend this country in other ways.

...

On Monday, Debnam also announced that exhaustive research has led to the conclusion that a fungus called Nosema Ceranae, combined with a pair of viruses, could well be the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, which results in sick bees leaving their hives and not returning.


Read more: http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/07/22/news/local/news05.txt

[benld74]

1. Oh, honey! - translation - Oh, beeshit!

[newfie11]

2. :rofl:

:rofl: :rofl:

[librechik]

12. it's actually bee vomit.

But i get the joke.

[roguevalley]

15. I adore bees. My grandpa had them and I would sit behind the hive,

not more than three inches from the entrance and watch them for hours. I don't think you can find a more honorable and decent insect, as odd as that sounds. They would all beat their wings when the hive got too hot, dump their dead out the door and defend against bees from other hives. There is nothing more beautiful and delicious than honey right from the hive. Without bees, we are nothing. I also like ants. :)

[4_TN_TITANS]

30. I agree!

We're going to have more cantalopes from the garden than we know what to do with, thanks to those little guys! We had bought Sevin dust but never used it after seeing all the bees working blooms in the garden and yard. I would have to say, the little bit we've lost from bugs is more than made up by the pollination job those bees are doing for us.

[NJCher]

3. note the article says

The best way to help your backyard bees is to avoid using pesticides, or to be careful about which ones you use.


I doubt many DU-ers use pesticides, but they may know people who use them. Pass the word!



Cher

[central scrutinizer]

4. honeybees range over a wide radius from their hives

I would never keep bees in a suburban environment since there would be potentially hundreds of sources of indiscriminate pesticide usage that you could not control.

[blueoak]

7. Organic beekeepers don't have CCD

If the scientists could look outside their box, they would see that organic beekeepers don't have CCD. The use of hi fructose corn syrup, and all the antibiotics, and other chemicals the beekeepers use cause bees to be susceptible to CCD. Add days cooped up without cleansing flights to defecate,being transported to pollinate crops thousands of miles away causes CCD. If the bees were fed their own honey, and transported allowing for stopping like other livestock laws demand, there would be no CCD.

[Lochloosa]

8. Welcome to DU blueoak

:toast:

[Occulus]

24. All of that just makes far too much sense.

Far, far too much sense for our government to actually take the necessary steps to fix the problem.

[jeanruss]

5. EU bav

The European Union has banned 2 pesticides they say are causing the bee collapse. They have also suggested that the USA get with the program and do the same.

[valerief]

17. Yeah, when Hell freezes over, when we ban pit bulls like Europe, and when we

we ban bisphenol-A like Europe. In other words, never.

[yardwork]

25. I believe that those pesticides are made by Bayer.

Bayer, coincidentally (or not) makes the treatment for anthrax.

[renate]

6. I would not like to have Rumsfeld's karmic debt

It's impossible to know how many lives and limbs were lost because he wanted to keep all of America's bees at home. Good lord, what a stupid and selfish thing to do. We can't even share our bees to help people in need?

[defendandprotect]

9. Our welfare is linked to the bees -- to nature --- and we are being told that

astonishly they can be "trained" to help us ---

Just absorb all of that --- !!!

[flashl]

10. K&R nt

[truth2power]

11. Like everything else Rummy sez...

known knowns, unknown unknowns, blah blah blah... I think that guy is batshit crazy. Seriously!


"If the U.S. showed the world that bees could find land mines, this nation could not then use bees for other defensive - domestic - purposes,"

I've read that statement a half-dozen times. What in the name of holy hell is he talking about?? It's like taking those little magnet words off your refrigerator, scrambling them and trying to make sense of the result.

What? There wouldn't be enough bees to go around?

What are these "domestic defensive" purposes?

How about this? The US Govt is going to plant land mines on US soil to defend us against turrists, and if the trained bees knew where the mines were, then the turists, using their super Capt. Midnite goggles could avoid the areas where the bees are gathering. Yeah, that's it!

But that begs the question of what the bees will be used for . Strap little nano-Kalishnikovs to their bodies? My head hurts!

Help me out, here. What does that mean?

[ArbustoBuster]

14. I shoulda read this before posting mine.

Um...consider what I wrote to be written in support of truth2power's argument. :)

[wordpix]

16. I was wondering, too---what else does Rummy have in mind for the bees?

:shrug:

[Peace Patriot]

19. I'm with you. This is a great weirdness (among many) from Rumsfeld.

Some ideas:

Monsanto is about to come out with a trademark GMO Bee, and, since defense of Monsanto is like defense of Halliburton (the Dark Lords equate both with the "defense" of the U.S.--kind of like the "defense" of our capitol city that Rumsfeld put up on 9/11), and...

...I can't finish this thought, but it's a pregnant one. The U.S. bees that were to be used to find the landmines were already Monsanto bees, and spreading them to Europe would wreck their patent (profits)? Or...ah!...they haven't finished killing off the bee populations here--a preliminary needed so that Monsanto can come out with its Franken-Bee-- and they are afraid that the exported landmine bees will prosper in Europe/Asia/Iraq and be re-imported? Or...

...the Defense Dept. is creating Killer Bees, and the export of U.S. bees (for a peaceful purpose) would affect that in some way (expose it, undermine it)? Or...

...export of U.S. bees might bring about European study of U.S. bees, and expose the reasons for Colony Collapse and who is responsible? (Maybe the whole use of U.S. bees to find landmines is just a ploy to get U.S. bees out of the country for objective foreign study.) (Anybody know why European or Asia bees wouldn't be just as good at finding landmines as U.S. bees?)

Why would Rumsfeld NOT want U.S. bees to go find landmines that are no longer useful for blowing up and terrorizing civilians in foreign lands?

He's nuts? He likes chaos, bloodshed, torture, children with missing limbs? He gets off on it? A possibility. But usually his horrors have a profit purpose. Could be just opposition to the anti-landmine movement (landmines and other, particularly horrible anti-people weapons, like clusterbombs and DU bullets are so very profitable). He didn't want to help this movement in any way--in order to lessen publicity about it (which might make people think about war and the millions of dead or maimed innocent victims of it)?

[lurky]

21. Domestic uses...

So, if bees can be trained to sniff out land mines, could they be trained to sniff out individuals and, um, ...get... them?

I feel a science fiction moment coming on...
:tinfoilhat::scared::tinfoilhat:

[ArbustoBuster]

13. Rumsfeld's response doesn't even make sense!

If we use the bees outside of the US, then we can't use the bees here domestically? Huh? Does he think that bees are a finite resource that have to be mined from volcanoes or something? If you use some bees to find mines, you can then purchase other bees to do something domestically. I know that it's a terribly un-Republican thing to do - using a renewable resource - but it's perfectly normal.

[KittyWampus]

26. yes it does, what he was REALLY saying is if bees can be trained to detect landmines we can't have

other countries acquiring them as they would make OUR LANDMINES OBSOLETE>

[ArbustoBuster]

31. That's completely evil.

It's no less than I would have expected from Rummy, though.

[The Croquist]

33. I don't think that's a quote from Rumsfeld

As far as I know the US only deploys land mines inside and along the DMZ in Korea. The DMZ is carefully watched and I doubt that the North Koreans would use bees to clear it.

Perhaps there is a better reason such as introducing a non-native species into an environment is considered bad. I doubt that Rumsfeld would care but maybe somebody spoke to the EPA about it.

[HopeHoops]

18. Chem Lawns are DEAD lawns!

All but two other neighbors in my suburban jungle use various poison companies to avoid unsightly colorful flowers in their yard. I have clover everywhere. I also have HONEY BEES THIS YEAR!!!!! (saw exactly three last year). My "Victory Garden" is yielding a great harvest even this early in the season. Chem Lawn, Tru Green, whatever they call it - if they have to put up little toothpick "WARNING - POISON ON YARD" signs, why would anyone allow them to spray a yard that children and pets use?

The rabbits don't eat much other than the pea and bean leaves. The bees actually SHOW UP in my yard and garden. My kids don't have weird skin rashes. When they call or stop by to tell me how they can improve my "lawn", I simply tell them I don't HAVE a "lawn". I have a yard. Oh, and did I mention the 65 lb border collie who doesn't like poison on her grass? Want to meet her? They don't stay around long.

I've seen articles on Nosema Ceranae but I doubt it is the cause. A fungus wouldn't spread so homogeneously. It is something the lawn poison industry is using and they'll gradually phase it out to avoid being blamed, but they know what it is and they know they are responsible. My yard is alive with birds, animals, and yes, even bees. We've counted over thirty different kinds in one day but honey bees are actually back this year.

Just tell them you have a "YARD", not a "lawn".

[yardwork]

27. Welcome to DU!

I agree.

[flashl]

20. Some of my saved articles on militarized honeybees

Finding Land Mines by Following a Bee

Conditioned to associate explosive chemicals with food, bees can show the way to buried mines without risk to dogs or humans. Today's methods of detecting land mines has one problem: Whether accompanied by keen-nosed dogs or chemical-vapor detectors, human mine-sweepers still must step their solitary way through minefields. It's dangerous work, risking a trip of a fuse that could easily maim or kill. So to avoid that, a group of scientists is researching how to put a more nimble creature to work: the honeybee.

By conditioning a bee to think it's finding food when it senses chemicals used in explosives, a team of scientists from the University of Montana, Montana State University, and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration is trying to harness the bee's acute sense of smell. The group then maps the positions of the hungry swarms, using a laser-based detection method similar to radar, called lidar. Led by researchers Jerry Bromenshenk and Joseph Shaw, the team reported its results in a recent issue of Nature's physics journal Optics Express.

450-YEAR PROJECT
The work comes as part of a push by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is funding the project, and other organizations to develop safer and more effective ways of detecting and removing land mines. A deadly reality in much of the developing world, land mines kill roughly 15,000 to 20,000 people each year, according to a 2003 RAND Corp. study. They can lay undetected for many years, only to be triggered by an unususpecting civilian out for a stroll.

But finding and neutralizing mines is painstaking work. According to the same study, it would take roughly 450 years to clear all the world's undetected mines.

...

Bees, on the other hand, are light, work for anyone, and can be "trained" in a matter of days.

---

Bomb-Sniffing Bees Could Protect Military, Civilians
Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a method for training the common honeybee to detect the explosives used in bombs.

Based on knowledge of bee biology, the new techniques could become a tool to combat the use of deadly improvised explosive devices (IEDs) encountered by American military troops abroad and also an emerging danger for civilians worldwide.

According to Tim Haarmann, principal investigator for the Stealthy Insect Sensor Project, the honeybee's phenomenal sense of smell rivals that of dogs.

The Los Alamos scientists, including Kirsten McCabe and Robert Wingo, developed methods to harness the honeybee's exceptional olfactory sense where the bees' natural reaction to nectar, sticking out their tongues, could be used to record an unmistakable response to a scent.

The scientists began with research into why bees are such good detectors, going beyond demonstrating that bees can be used to identify the presence of explosives. Using reward training techniques common to bee research, the researchers trained bees to stick out their tongues when they were exposed to vapors from TNT, C4, TATP explosives, and propellants.

---

US military trains 'air force' of bomb-sniffing bees
US military defense scientists have found a way to train the common honey bee to smell explosives used in bombs, a skill they say could help protect American troops abroad.
Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said in an online statement published Monday they had developed a method to harness the bee's exceptional olfactory sense.

"The new techniques could become a leading tool in the fight against the use of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which present a critical vulnerability for American military troops abroad and is an emerging danger for civilians worldwide," the research laboratory said.

The scientists used Pavlovian techniques on the bees' natural response to nectar, a sticking out of their tongue, or proboscis extension reflex.

By rewarding them with sugar water, the scientists taught bees to give the same reflex action when they were exposed to vapors from explosives such as dynamite, C4 plastic and TATP (triacetone triperoxide), often used by suicide bombers.

[WheelWalker]

22. To bee, or not to bee...what was the question?

[bluesmail]

23. One more reason to Bow Down to the Honeybees.

This is an amazing story. And you know what, I believe it.:kick: and I have recommended it.

[lonestarnot]

28. Is there anything that the bushitlers haven't decimated or let be decimated? Name something, one

thing. :unfeignedoutrage:

[HCE SuiGeneris]

29. What we have witnessed in our lifetimes in relation to the utter disregard for life on this planet

in order to make/steal/swindle a buck, makes me intensely furious.

[bvar22]

32. I don't think this is true.

We have a lot of Honey Bees, and they haven't found a single land mine yet. :shrug:

Starkraven tending her Bees