At 05:44 AM 5/13/02 -0500, you wrote:
Point of clarification: Defense Agencies (military) have no mission to
protect bees against mites. Their mission is to protect lives. All of
the funding for the bee work and detection of bombs, land mines, anthrax,
etc. if from military dollars - not USDA. However, in the process, the
military has made available a 1 acre TENT in which we have been looking
at mating queens -- so that you could ensure European bees in AHB zones,
preserve genetic traits, and there's an interest by a bee researcher to
use the TENT to look at varroa distribution dynamics. In addition, the
work described in the NY Times is producing new technologies that may
eventually help reduce management costs and increase productivity for
commercial beekeepers with bees distributed over hundred of miles and in
several states. This work is also developing methods that may eventually
improve pollination efficiency. Finally, all of this work is really
critical to developing improved methods for looking at new generation
pesticides and bee/agricultural crop protection from acts of terrorism.
So, none of this would be done if it wasn't for defense support. Others
are funded to look at mites, AHB, etc. In fact, there are established
labs. Finally, the numbers cited in the article cover a whole array of
studies involving other insects, etc. Only a small part of the whole
program focused on bees.
Mites, AHB, small hive beetle are immediate crisis problems. In the
meantime, for the industry to grow and prosper, some new approaches are
needed. So, although this work of using bees to save lives may not seem
important to you if you don't live near a land mine field or in a city
with roving bombers, ultimately we expect lessons learned from this to be
essential to longer range applications for better bee management and
productivity.
Bottom line, its not a tradeoff of mites versus bombs. DARPA funds
research aimed at national security and the protection of lives - not
basic bee research. DARPA is the actual originator of the Internet and
the Stealth bomber. They fund high risk research that may have big
payoffs. They also fund for very short periods of time -- 3 years is
about the length of a typical DARPA research project. That's about like
saying, start from scratch and solve the mite problem in
under 3 years.
Last time the press latched on to this topic, it was in the early
conceptual stages. Its now showing real promise. In the meantime, I
think you will begin to see payoffs to beekeeping itself.