“It is a remarkably hairy close-up. But this tiny microchip attached to a bee’s back will hopefully explain why so many honeybees are dying from disease. Professor Juergen Tautz and his team at the University of Wurzburg in Germany are studying the health of more than 150,000 bees, in the hope of halting the apparently inexorable decline in their worldwide population.
Bees have always been tricky to study individually. Each colony has around 50,000 members, all interacting simultaneously and making it near-impossible to observe them. Previously, each bee would be painted with a different-coloured dot on its back and scientists would video the colony — watching the tape endlessly, to try to work out the behaviour in each insect. But a revolutionary technology enables the study of bees at close quarters. As soon as a bee hatches, a tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) microchip is stuck to its back using a lacquer. This allows scientists to study its behaviour throughout its life.”
(via The Daily Mail)
2 responses so far ↓
1 Trevor Blake // Jun 29, 2008 at 10:57 am
When it was determined that a disease was killing the bees and it wasn’t something humans were doing, this story dropped out of the mainstream media. Humanity’s over-arching evil is a way for people to still feel special in a secular modern world. If it’s determined that humans caused the advance of the bee disease, then this will be in the mainstream media again.
See also the bee television at WAX.
2 T.V. // Jun 29, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Good point Trevor. I talked with a beekeeper about a year ago who said that they noticed them dissapearing long before the sensationalistic MSM put the story out there. Thanks for the link.
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