have enjoyed seeing posts from south africa on the bee-list again
(where's garth cambray?)...any experience with capensis and/or scutellata is
of value worldwide, thanks for sharing...
btw, noticed no reply on query about explosives/bees and found this in my
files, unfortunately no source references available but many versions of
this have been circulated both on and off
bee-l so thought to pass it along...for what it's worth, the often mentioned
j.bromenshenk is an active participant of this list, maybe you could
communicate directly and get more info...

"Bees get recruited to fight pollution
From wire reports -
As if bees weren't already busy with pollinating and
making honey. Scientists are recruiting these industrious
insects to scour the countryside for pollution.
Bees are basically "flying dust mops," says Jerry
Bromenshenk, an entomologist at the University of Montana in
Missoula. On their many trips to and from the hive, they pick up
particles of dust and pollution in the air.
Stuck to the bees' bristly hairs, the particles and
pollutants get carried into the hive, where the bees dislodge the
pollutants when they groom themselves.
And while fanning their wings, they circulate
contaminated air throughout the hive.
Bromenshenk and other scientists are monitoring hive
air to measure the types and quantities of pollutants that
far-foraging bees carry back with them. Using highly sensitive
equipment, they sniff the air for traces of heavy metals,
atomic radiation and the chemical signatures of dry cleaning fluids and
other semivolatile and volatile compounds.
Bromenshenk started using bees as "dirt magnets"
about 25 years ago.
Nowadays, even more detailed information can be
gathered from programmable microchips, glued to the bees'
bellies or backs.
Each microchip weighs less than 30 milligrams_a bit
big for the average honeybee but fine for its bigger cousin, the
bumblebee.Using hand-held scanners, the researchers can
identify individual bees in flight.
Bee-based technologies are now being trained to
locate buried land mines. An estimated 60 million to 70 million of these
deadly explosive devices are currently located in 70
countries. All land mines leak minute quantities of explosive
into their surroundings. Bromenshenk hopes that bees can be
trained to pick up this scanty evidence and bring it home to
the hive, where monitors can detect it. This would help bomb
squads with their efforts to defuse our planet's lands.
Should the team and its trained flyers succeed, the
world will be a safer and more bee-utiful place to live."