Good Afternoon:

I'm going to be at both the American Honey Producers, Baton Rouge, and the
America Beekeeping Federation Meetings, Kansas City. I'm looking forward to
meeting many of you.

We are at a critical transition point.  Our research has produced
unexpected results in terms of our ability to condition bees to seek out
things -- and we think we may be able to change how bees respond to crops
that are difficult or iffy to pollinate.  Since we can get bees to reliably
fly to the exact location of trace amounts of explosive, with no reward
given at the target (explosive's in dirt), and keep them doing this day
after day for weeks, we think there's potential for using this capability
in other applications such as improved pollination.

We are also getting lots of national press attention, and we want to turn
this to useful activities for the bee industry.  We've been contacted by
the major morning news programs, as well as Discovery and The Learning
Channel and National Geographic.  Seems we ought to be able to get out some
information about the importance of the bee industry, even if their
interest is primarily on headline stories such as our training bee to find
landmines.

Similary, our hardware (equipment) is becoming less expensive and we have
just received a small grant to assist in establishing a business aimed at
providing these new tools to beekeepers.  What the products might be range
from our bee conditioning systems to anti-theft devices to robotics.  What
we need is guidance from beekeepers -- what do you need to reduce your
manual labor and increase productivity - in addition to good honey and
pollination prices?

And, we wouldn't mind finding some investors to help bring these products
to market.

Finally, we have seen more pesticide problems than in any period since the
1960s.  Dan Mayer, who now lives up the valley and I have been called upon
to investigate and review some very large bee kill problems involving
beekeepers from Minnesota to Texas. You can read about one of the "smaller"
problems in this month's Bee Culture.  We're glad to help the beekeepers,
but we need to establish the ability to provide some services on demand,
and we need to find a way to help beekeepers without having to make the
beekeeper, who already has experienced a major loss, pay all of the bills.
This is especially important, since resolving these problems that is of
concern to the industry as a whole.

As a first step, we are creating an institute for agricultural, biological,
and chemical safety and security.  The institute would act as a clearing
center, training and test facility, to look at pesticide problems as well
as uses of bees in the more exotic applications that we have pioneered -
from landmine and unexploded ordinance detection to inspections of cargo,
vehicles, and maybe even luggage.  I'll be bringing a presentation to the
meetings on my notebook computer that demonstrates bees searching a vehicle
for a bomb.  It only takes 2 minutes to view, but I think you'll find the
results rather amazing.

Anyway, I'd like to talk to people about these issues.  Our research work
has a 30 year history.  One month ago, we added a business wing and we
found manufacturing partners -- the master agreements are being put in
place.  We also established the Institute.  We envision it as a non-profit
foundation aimed at providing needed, but currently unavailable, bee and
agriculture-related services and technologies with a strong
educational/public information component.  Establishing interactive,
informative displays in Museums of Natural History such as the Smithsonian
and a national TV series on the bee industry (similar to Victory Garden) is
part of our agenda.

For these efforts, we are going to need lots of input, including forming A
Advisory Group or Board of Directors who would represent all facets of
bee-related industry - honey producers, packers, sales and marketing, bee
equipment suppliers, educational groups, etc.

Whew!! I realize that this is a lot, but we are doing most of this already.
 We need some collaborators and partners to get this going fast.  Hope to
see you at one of the upcoming meetings.  Come prepared to work -- I'd like
to draft some proposals during these meetings to take to a variety of
funding sources, from federal grants to growers to venture capitalists.

Thanks

Jerry Bromenshenk