Senior field researcher Scott Debnam, part of UM's increasingly famous bee project, blew through a long list of fascinating facts about honeybees - and revealed a possible cause for Colony Collapse Disorder just discovered at UM a week ago - during his City Club Missoula presentation Monday.
But he stopped the crowd in its tracks when he revealed the Rumsfeld-initiated roadblock.
Debnam and others spent 10 months preparing to go overseas to start locating the hidden land mines that threaten literally millions of people worldwide. A week before their scheduled departure, Rumsfeld called to say the mission was off.
Why? If the U.S. showed the world that bees could find land mines, this nation could not then use bees for other defensive - domestic - purposes, Rumsfeld said. In other words, the U.S. doesn't have a domestic land-mine problem, so UM's bees should be used to defend this country in other ways.
The scientists were flabbergasted, but the defense secretary had the final say. And it was “no.”
On Monday, Debnam also announced that exhaustive research has led to the conclusion that a fungus called Nosema Ceranae, combined with a pair of viruses, could well be the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, which results in sick bees leaving their hives and not returning.
So far, the solution for commercial and other beekeepers has been to replace their bees with those from areas where CCD has not struck. But Debnam, who pointed out that beekeeping is the fourth-largest livestock industry in Montana, said a second round of CCD could put many commercial beekeepers out of business.
While many think that production of honey is the most important thing bees do, Debnam - an Alabama native and UM graduate - said honey is simply a byproduct. Their most important function is pollination.
Commercial beekeepers haul their hives by truck across the country to prove pollinating services, starting in the 400-mile-long valley in California that produces 80 percent of the world's almonds.
The bees - Debnam calls them “the girls” - are hauled from crop to crop until the job is finished.
Other points Debnam made:
- There are an estimated 25,000 undiscovered land mines worldwide. Some 2,500 people are killed each year by the mines, the majority of them children. Thousands more are maimed or disabled.
- It takes four years to train a dog to sniff out a land mine, but only two days to train a bee. While bees aren't heavy enough to set off a mine even if they land on one, many trained dogs have been killed by sitting on live mines.
- The best way to help your backyard bees is to avoid using pesticides, or to be careful about which ones you use.
- There are at least 100,000 honeybee hives in Montana, all of which must be registered with the state.
- A colony of bees can recycle the air in a hive every three minutes, and also has the ability to cool or heat the hive to protect new bees during their worm stage.
- At the request of the Department of Homeland Security, bees have been trained to detect poisonous substances in a building's air-conditioning system.
Listen to Scott Debnam's main presentationListen to question and answer session.
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