Randy asked when we were going to produce a chem sensor to sniff colonies
for diseases, mites, etc.
That's an obvious approach, but may not be the best, given current
technologies. After 33 years of sampling everything from ag chemicals, pesticides,
industrial pollutants, military chemicals, urban materials, radioactive
fallout, and even biological agents (from microbial pesticides to anthrax
surrogates), we know a little bit about chem sampling.
The reasons that we don't have a field portable, do-it-all sensor include:
1) Cost -- good analytical instruments can run from 10s to 100s of thousands
of dollars,
2) Specificity -- even the best instruments and sensors have a limited or
narrow range of types of chemicals that can be reliably detected.
- In the lab, we use different instruments and often different labs to
cover all of the chemicals that we would need to examine -- if you want to
protect/assess colony health, you are going to need to be able to detect
materials indicative of each disease and pest (often unknown) and you'd ideally want
to look for other things like build up of residues/vapors from things like
miticides, contaminants like HMF from bad syrup, etc.
3) Sensitivity -- most field portable instruments give up sensitivity for
size, battery life, etc.
4) Availability -- in many cases the technology still does not exist.
Surprisingly, we can't find good information on the chemicals that give foul brood
such a distinctive odor, much less a sensor.
5) Funding -- we get some very large grants, but our funding agencies have
very specific interests and place restrictions on our expenditures -- we are a
university-based and private company organization -- all of our $$ come from
clients with specific interests, and those are mainly the military.
We get no money from the university, state, or any federal agency for day to
day expenditures, discretionary research. We're in a mode that one of my
colleagues calls: data for dollars. We'd love to get some funding to look at
things like designing sensors for sampling hives -- but this again is high
cost work - a few thousand dollars won't cover the R&D.
Let's take a look at some examples from our chem sampling experience -- to
look at volatile and sem-volatile industrial and military contaminants, we use
a Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer with a thermal desorption unit -- for
the whole system, including sampling pumps, we've spent about $250,000 -- and
10 years ago, we spent $175k for our first unit, which has worn out. Cost
is probably the reasons that we were using vapor sampling systems in 1995,
while the national bee labs have only recently started using similar approaches.
But, our GC/MS instruments are not set up to do pesticides. Another lab in
another department, with about $500,000 in instruments does that.
Heavy metals, trace elements -- we use Inductively Coupled Plasma
Spectrometry (ICP) - unless we are looking from arsenic, mercury - then we either
interface yet another device with the ICP or switch to Atomic Absorption
Spectrometry. Radionuclides -- whole different lab and instruments.
None of these instruments are appropriate for field use, and samples often
have to be prepped prior to analysis - which can take a day or more.
We have used field portable instruments - ranging from simple to
state-of-the-art, not yet available to the public or even commercial labs. Examples
include FIDO, the explosives sniffing unit that is slowing gaining acceptance,
and much more recent instruments including the SANDIA labs HOUND unit, Oak
Ridge Lab's suitcase-sized ion trap, and we hope to try an very small portable,
ion trap that SANDIA intends to test next summer. So far, none are
appropriate for evaluating colony health.
Two new areas of research that may help solve this problem are polymer-based
sensors and nano-based instruments. I regularly review proposals in these
areas -- the polymers are exciting, offer simple, low cost devices for
detecting specific chemicals. Problem is, there doesn't seem to be a good way of
designing materials for particular needs, its more of a trial and error process
with different materials. For example, FIDO does well at detecting DNT, so
it seemed like it would be easy to find a polymer for TNT -- not nearly as
easy as it sounds - after several years, I believe they're still trying to find
the elusive material to use in the sensor.
So, in the meantime, we wait for the technological breakthrough, and we
consult with other scientists who do have some funding to look at things like
foul brood detection. We continue to look for funding to develop some of these
sensors -- but its easier to get federal funding to find chem warfare agents,
meth labs, or dead bodies than it is to get the level of funding needed to
pioneer new tools for detecting chemicals inside beehives that have use by
beekeepers. Unfortunately, beekeeping has a much more limited commercial
potential in terms of sales then does army force protection or homeland security,
and monitoring honey bee health doesn't have the public concern/support
afforded human health protection. And other than USDA, few other federal agencies
recognize the strategic importance of honey bees and pollination in terms of
protecting our nation's food supply chain.
This does not mean that we aren't always looking for simple sensors that can
detect bee problems, especially since we intend to start testing, hopefully
marketing pallets that can monitor things like weight changes in bee colonies,
hive temperatures, and weather - transmitting this all to the beekeeper via
satellite, for a cost of about $5 per month -- maybe as early as this summer.
We also think that we have a different way of monitoring the health of bee
colonies -- one that uses sound, not chemicals. Early results are exciting --
we can detect varroa mites, foul brood, queenless colonies, some races of
bees, should be able to predict swarms, and are guessing that we can detect hive
beetle, using a simple acoustic probe - with no need to open the hive, and
with a result in under 2 minutes.
We've applied to federal agencies for funding to make this happen -- which
is iffy and will take months/years. We're also going to be at the national
beekeeping meetings, talking about this new approach on which we've filed for
U.S. and Canadian patent. We're looking for investors (beekeepers, growers,
hopefully the national beekeeping organizations). With sufficient funds, we
could have a couple of dozen handheld units in the field next summer for
testing by large commercial beekeepers and bee researchers.
Keep your fingers crossed, and we will be delighted to talk to you in
January.
Cheers
Jerry
J.J. Bromenshenk
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