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.