Military Research On Bees

I recently ran across an interesting bit of information from the University of Montana. It seems that they are working with the U.S. Department of Defense to study the usefulness of bees as a method of detecting hazardous substances in the environment.

No, I'm not talking about letting bees loose and if there's a toxic substance, letting them die as a way of warning. I'm talking about training bees to work for us and to assist in the detection of such substances. I never thought I'd ever see the day, but it seems that if this research pans out, my bees may get drafted into the Army.

What exactly would bees do for the military? Well, according to the researchers in Montana, they could be used for several functions, among which are:

• The detection of low concentrations of explosives from UXOs or land mines. UXO's, by the way, are the military term for unexploded bombs.
• The detection of biowarfare agents.
• The detection of other "agents" of interest to the Defense Department.

This research is a part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Controlled Biological Systems Program. The Controlled Biological Systems Program "explores the unique sensorimotor performance of biological organisms for Defense applications. Capturing such performance could result in the use of organisms as sentinel species, collecting real time information in the environment about the presence of toxins or other threats." In other words, the Defense Department wants to us bees as collectors of information on substances which might pose threats to humans.

In this research, they've even gone so far as to use associative learning techniques to teach bees to fly through mazes. Part of this research even has implications beyond this world, since the University is part of testing with NASA to see how bees react in weightlessness. That's right, NASA has put bees onboard their reduced gravity research aircraft, nicknamed the "vomit comet", and taken them to a weightless state to study their flight patterns. This research brings up interesting possibilities. Will the first earthlings on Mars be bees? In fact, the University has put out a series of videos dealing with their bee research. Here you can actually see bees in zero gravity, bees flying a maze, and other interesting video's of the bee research projects at the University.

As research continues, it is becoming obvious that bees are much more than honey producers. Their abilities go far beyond the traditional ones we all know, and someday, we may find that they have actually helped to advance the cause of science and defended our country. Interesting thought, isn't it?

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