Dee Asks:

>Jerry:
>Could you give us an update on a chip...for distinguishing AHBs from Eu 
>bees by noise
>analysis


Dee

You're referring to the work of Howard Kerr, retired, at Oak Ridge National 
Lab -- but you're combining two different projects:

Howard is an engineer who wanted to keep bees on the ORNL reservation.  So, 
he talked them into letting him work on some projects for the bee industry.

1) An acoustic sensor to distinguish Africanized from European bees, and
2) A chip for tracking bees.

The first is still listed on ORNL sites.  It consisted of a capsule, 
microphone, and band-width filter.  The  idea was to catch a bee, put it in 
the capsule, let it fly to the light (clear plastic tip).  Because AHB is a 
bit smaller than the European race, Howard hypothesized that the thorax 
size/shape might effect wing beat frequency, since it acts like a return 
spring for the wings.  As I understand, it worked if one compared a 
European bee to a true African bee.  But, with all of the blending of 
genetics in the Africanized bees found in the U.S., it didn't do well with 
these hybrids.  In other words, it could distinguish the extremes.

The second was a chip that solved the battery power problem by using a tiny 
photocell.  It used infra-red (as I remember) for transmission of the 
signal from the bee to a transmitter/receiver suspended under a 
balloon.  ORNL spent over $100k of their own money on this.  The bee 
researchers and the bee industry failed to beat a path to their door.  So, 
the only folks with sufficient funds to carry this on and use it came from 
the three letter gov agencies.

I don't know whether it ever went into use, and doubt that we will ever 
know (little issue of classified work).  It did have an unexpected 
outcome.  ORNL got a lot of press on this project, and to this day, many at 
ORNL credit it with starting a whole push on micro-electronics that 
continues today with things like nanochips and mems technologies.  I've 
seen ORNL presentations that use the bee chip as a metaphor for this whole 
are of work.

Jerry

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