At 02:40 AM 3/2/2006, you wrote:

<Do you know where and how scientists first got the idea to try and train
honeybees, instead of dogs, to sniff explosives in mine-fields?>

We know exactly how this came about, its a long story.  We're the 
innovators -- proposed and got the funding to do this.

Now, there's years of prior work -- we did 30 years of using bees as 
environmental samplers.  In 1995, we added on-hive electronics and went 
looking for harmful materials at Aberdeen Proving Grounds -- where there's 
lots of buried junk, much of it potentially toxic.  APG was capping a VERY 
hazardous waste site only 16 miles from Baltimore.  All of the water coming 
off the site was being cleaned by a water treatment plant and screened by 
fish before being released in the BAY.  Again, no one wanted an accidental 
spill into waters near Baltimore.  The guys doing the capping operated all 
of the heavy machinery remotely, from a shed 1 mile away.  The bees, bee 
counters, and on-line communications provided an air warning system similar 
to that of the fish.  The air sampling instruments tended to give false 
alarms with all of the heavy equipment -- no one was allowed anywhere near 
that toxic dump while the heavy machinery was running.  The bees were the 
fall back -- as long as they didn't suddenly start dying, no one pushed the 
panic button, evacuated Baltimore.

One day, I got a visit from another branch of DoD.  They asked -- if bees 
can locate, sample, and map hazardous chemicals, can they SHOW US where 
they got them?  Obviously, the DoD knew about dogs, operant 
conditioning.  My response was that I was reasonably sure this could be 
done (just didn't know how good bees might be, whether they could detect 
novel chemicals (not a floral scent, not a pheromone), and I didn't have 
the equipment to put the whole system together.  It took another year, but 
by that time we had a major contract from DoD, and subcontracts to three 
national labs, to pull all of this together.

Now DoD also knew about moths and their ability to locate mates 20 miles 
away.  They found the WASP HOUND group working on how wasps locate prey, 
then (if the prey is out of reach down in the plant) mark the plant with a 
chemical marker.  They found Smith at OHIO working with proboscis extension 
in response to odors.  From my conversations, they didn't know about Adrian 
until after we came on board.  I recommended his book to them.  So, they 
found several groups working on insects.  They also funded work to look at 
beetles with infra-red sensors, birds, lobsters -- its a long list.  And 
not to be forgotten, the remote control rats.

At one point, Adrian was pulled into all of this by DoD, as was 
InScentinel, a group in England that uses bees in a box to screen for all 
sorts of things.

The DoD scouts were harvesting technologies from groups actively pushing 
the edge of the envelope in this area.  We got the nod because of our 
long-term work using bees as sentinels AND all of our hardware and software 
(for on-hive monitoring).  The latter was a big issue to them.

Of all of these, the rats, wasps, and bees have continued, under other 
funding -- and I suspect because of a dogged conviction by each of the 
successful groups that there's real potential and use.

Jerry

P.S.  Adrian has put in his two bits from time to time, and I greatly 
appreciate and acknowledge his input.  How we effect our conditioning is 
different than his approach, and we had to turn to computer processors to 
automate and fine-tune the system, but we both use odor to drive 
bees.  Note, our patents are not on conditioning bees, per se.

Also, my Ph.D. was in insect behavior, so this was a chance to go back to 
my academic roots.  Sampling chemicals is interesting, but I more enjoy the 
behavioral topics and our technical toys.

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