My apologies if anyone takes issue with the following, but we've a short time frame.  Most of you know we've been working for some time on acoustic scanners to detect bee pests, like mites, and bee diseases.  You may not know that initially, we developed this technology for the Army to use to use bees to guard against releases of poisonous gases.  

We've now come full circle.  Last summer, under a USDA SBIR Phase I project, we were able to detect both acute and chronic exposure to the neonic insecticide clothianidin, and to discriminate between the two levels of exposure, using onlly the sounds produced by bees in their colonies.  These results are very promising.  FYI, the older pesticides tend to make bees noisy; the neonicotinoids make them quiet. 

This week, we are submitting an Application for the next Phase of Testing, a 2-year project.  USDA looks for letters of support, specifically:


·       Aletter of support for the project and/or some in-kind commitment; 


Here's a brief description of the project:


Remoteand Handheld Pesticide Event Detection using Bees
 
During 2014, Bee Alert developed a hand-held andhive-mounted in-hive recorder that allows real-time monitoring of pesticideevents in bees.  These devices are alsocapable of detecting a wide range of health issues that afflict bees, such asfoul brood and Nosema, and can alsotell you if a hive is queen less.  Theprototype device, pictured at left, with pesticide detection capability, wasdeveloped using USDA SBIR funding.  

We are now seeking further USDA SBIR funding to make this device commerciallyavailable.  To do this, we need yourhelp.  Simply put we need a letter fromyou (we can provide a draft version, if you wish) that states that this will bea product you can use and would be willing to purchase when availablecommercially.  You will not be making anactual commitment to buy this product, so no money is being committed by you.  Of course, if you wish to offer to do sometesting on your own bees as part of the follow on work, that would be great.
 
During 2015, Bee Alert plans to make the algorithms thatdetect pesticide events much more robust. We will also port the current grey-box handheld prototype to Android andiPhone smartphones so you can use your smartphone to do hive diagnostics.  All of this will make the device affordable,reliable and easy to use.
 
Pesticide incidents have always been amajor concern for bee keepers, especially for those beekeepers with coloniesspread throughout the country for pollination. In many cases, the beekeeper does not know about a pesticide incidentuntil they visit a bee yard and find dead bees underfoot.  By that time any chance of sampling for saidevent is often lost, as most pesticides degrade quickly. There is a pressingneed for a rapid notification system of such harmful events to provide beekeepers the opportunity to respond quickly. The time required for detection, reporting, investigating and respondingusing traditional approaches results in excessive loss of bees, high labor andcosts for chemical analyses that may not yield usable data. The early detectionand notification this device will provide will allow a beekeeper may be ableintervene and move the colonies away from exposure source before the coloniesare severely impacted.
 
For more information and some pictures of the scanner andinitial pesticide detection results, you can email me at [log in to unmask] or call me directlyon 406-544-9007 (Jerry Bromenshenk).  Wehope you can help – the industry needs this tool.

 
 
 
J.J. Bromenshenk
Bee Alert
Missoula, Mt  406-544-9007
[log in to unmask]
 


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