At 05:04 PM 11/28/00 -0000, you wrote:

Hi, we got a lot of press a year ago about a chip that we developed with
Ron Gilbert at BPNNL labs.  It is exactly what Ray and Dave are suggesting.
 But, it isn't as simple as it sounds:

1.  The economics are still not good, you have to mass produce and be able
to obtain a large mass market (lots of sales) before anyone will fund this
development.

2.  The chip has to be a miniature of those used on dogs, cats, fish, Levi
pants, etc.  The garment industry can afford to buy lots of chips if it
helps it find clones of brand name clothes from overseas.  They had a chip
that could be sown into the seam of a pair of pants.  The chip that would
cost about 25 cents, but that's only if you bought hundreds of thousands of
chips.  And, it didn't hold up to industrial clothes dryers.

3.  We had a 27 mg chip that worked on a bee, but it was too heavy and fat
for a worker to carry and would have been knocked off a queen.  We know of
a less than 10 mg chip that will work.  But then you have to redesign the
signal receiver.  And the chips cost more than the queen.

4.  The antennae is still the killer obstacle (we have a way to fix this,
but the initial tooling up will cost a bundle).

5.  The receiver has to penetrate some distance, and hives have metal
parts, etc. so the signal bounces around.  So, you can't buy the receiver
(hand-held wand, off the shelf).

6.  All of this is doable, but the startup costs are still prohibitive.

7.  We do know how to do this and have working prototypes - it is making
the transition to a commercial, affordable product that is the problem.
Only a few hobbiest and researchers would ever buy a system where the
receiver cost several thousand dollars and each chip costs more than a
queen.  You need a cheap receiver, and an inexpensive miniature chip.

Cheers


>Hi all
>
>The same sort of chip that is used to identify pet dogs and cats could
>surely be used on the back of a queen?
>
>Best Regards, Dave Cushman
>G8MZY
>Email: [log in to unmask]
>Website...Beekeeping and Bee Breeding
>http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman
>
>
Jerry J. Bromenshenk
[log in to unmask]
http://www.umt.edu/biology/bees