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German Airports Use Bees To Monitor Air Quality
The Düsseldorf International Airport and seven other airports in Germany have come up with a unique way of monitoring air quality; they use bees. The airports test the bees' honey twice a year for toxins, and batches that turn up clean are bottled and given away. From the article: "Assessing environmental health using bees as 'terrestrial bioindicators' is a fairly new undertaking, said Jamie Ellis, assistant professor of entomology at the Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory, University of Florida in Gainesville. 'We all believe it can be done, but translating the results into real-world solutions or answers may be a little premature.' Still, similar work with insects to gauge water quality has long been successful."
"Aiports"? What's an aiport?
..meh. obviously they aren't using 'spelling' bees at the "aiport" (sorry, couldn't resist.. heh)
oh so that's where all the bees have gone to....http://viewzone2.com/lostbeesx.html
From the article: "Assessing environmental health using bees as 'terrestrial bioindicators' is a fairly new undertaking, said Jamie Ellis, assistant professor of entomology at the Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory, University of Florida in Gainesville.
Fairly new undertaking? I don't think so.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
http://www.waste.org/~uber/seinfeld_beees.jpg
... how long it'll take animal rights idiots like PETA to threaten to bomb the airports in Germany after they read this. Oh, wait, do they even read? "Cruelty to bees, nuuuuuuuuuuu!!! Think of the horrid cruelty to cute, cuddly, fuzzy bees!!!"
Could bees be modern-day sentinels like the canaries once used as warning signals of toxic gases in coal mines?
Just what we need, there will be swarms of honey bees at airports, in parking lots, and at work, all testing the air quality. Somehow the whole "swarm of bees" thing scares me more than the actual pollution - at least canaries were cute.
with the Blackuweather airport forecast. Ollie, what's the air quality like there?
Ollie: [face covered in red welts and puffing up] It's full of bees!
The enemies of Democracy are
Research has found the air in Düsseldorf contains massive amounts of bee poop contamination.
Researchers are bereft of an explanation for this phenomenon but are going to try a control group of pigeons.
it's sad to even think about 10% of the evile deeds we're being trained to accept as everyday 'business' as useyouall. see you on the other side of it. it's doubtful the bees would be interested in 'testing' our poisoned air for us. seems like the folks in the bayou are now 'testing' the results of our foibles for the yachtsters et al.
the corepirate nazi illuminati is always hunting that patch of red on almost everyones' neck. if they cannot find yours (greed, fear ego etc...) then you can go starve. that's their platform now.
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greed, fear & ego (in any order) are unprecedented evile's primary weapons. those, along with deception & coercion, helps most of us remain (unwittingly?) dependent on its' life0cidal hired goons' agenda. most of our dwindling resources are being squandered on the 'wars', & continuation of the billionerrors stock markup FraUD/pyramid schemes. nobody ever mentions the real long term costs of those debacles in both life & any notion of prosperity for us, or our children. not to mention the abuse of the consciences of those of us who still have one, & the terminal damage to our atmosphere (see also: manufactured 'weather', hot etc...). see you on the other side of it? the lights are coming up all over now. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be your guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. we now have some choices. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on your brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
"The current rate of extinction is around 10 to 100 times the usual background level, and has been elevated above the background level since the Pleistocene. The current extinction rate is more rapid than in any other extinction event in earth history, and 50% of species could be extinct by the end of this century. While the role of humans is unclear in the longer-term extinction pattern, it is clear that factors such as deforestation, habitat destruction, hunting, the introduction of non-native species, pollution and climate change have reduced biodiversity profoundly.' (wiki)
"I think the bottom line is, what kind of a world do you want to leave for your children," Andrew Smith, a professor in the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, said in a telephone interview. "How impoverished we would be if we lost 25 percent of the world's mammals," said Smith, one of more than 100 co-authors of the report. "Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," added Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN director general. "We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives."--
"The wealth of the universe is for me. Every thing is explicable and practical for me .... I am defeated all the time; yet to victory I am born." --emerson
no need to confuse 'religion' with being a spiritual being. our soul purpose here is to care for one another. failing that, we're simply passing through (excess baggage) being distracted/consumed by the guaranteed to fail illusionary trappings of man'kind'. & recently (about 10,000 years ago) it was determined that hoarding & excess by a few, resulted in negative consequences for all.
consult with/trust in your creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." )one does not need to agree whois in charge to grasp the notion that there may be some assistance available to us(
boeing, boeing, gone.
In the US they would sell that honey in the airport at a 6000% markup.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
"Assessing environmental health using bees as 'terrestrial bioindicators' is a fairly new undertaking, said Jamie Ellis, assistant professor of entomology at the Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory...
Surely this type of approach has probably been used long before, by farmers, or for that matter, an expert honey producer would have been aware of this, just by subtle changes in honey taste.
Many of our "green" approaches are really old methods that were abandoned when the western world was industrialized. Take windmills for example. We could learn a lot from new applications of old methods.
You are more afraid of bees then of the pollution?
I guess some people will only feel safe after every other life-form has been exterminated. Well for those pollution might actual be the solution.
with this being checked twice a year, I think they'll notice people getting sick months before the bees give any clues. I'd love to know the exact toxins that they are expecting to find. I didn't think that bees were huge consumers of air. If they want to speed up the process, simply wipe down the jet engines from landing planes and get a sample bees spattered all around the intake.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
This is a cool idea. Another approach is to use lichens, although there might not be enough trees or other suitable substrates nearby.
-- Neville Flynn
how those Germans would use beer to monitor air quality ?
.. and the lawsuits when someone is stung and suffers emotional distress (also because of a ruined holiday causing additional stress) due to the airport's 'faulty biological equipment'...
I ate all your bees.
/Lonely Soldier
I'd say it's in the eye of the bee holder.
The last time I was in Germany, a few years ago, smoking was allowed everywhere, including the terminal of the Frankfurt airport.
Thus, it would be ironic to be measuring the air quality around the airport, while the actual airport customers are being gassed in the terminal.
Doing some Googling, it seems like Germany is smartening up and imposing smoking bans.
My wife and I are hobbyist bee keepers. A few comments
1) bees will fly several miles from their hive when looking for nectar and pollen. Of course i wouldn't expect a pefectly symmetrical distribution of bee activity in all 360 degrees and at all distances away from the hive. So siting the hive is a relevant concern
2) the collection of nectar/etc is non-uniform with the passage of time. the amount of material collected depends on things like colony size [which in turn depends on the amount of nectar collected.. yay for cross-talk in experimental variables :)]. The bees are obviously collecting much more when something nearby is blooming. However, bees mostly stay home in cold weather or rainy conditions. So the amount of foraging bees do as a function of calendar date depends on the bloom and the weather conditions.
One could say that the experiment ignores this by only taking two measurements... .. .which brings me to my final point: a hive is usually tended to considerably more often than twice in a season. the bees can put away a tremendous amount of honey in a short time if the colony is at full strength and there is a strong nearby bloom. if the hive becomes too crowded the colony will split and swarm. If the hive is made so large so as to be empty, it will be difficult to tell when a certain cell of comb was filled.
There are other factors: the creation of honey involves bees filling a cell with nectar and then vibrating their wings over that cell to manage the heat and evaporation. Any number of factors might affect the evaporative rate of the honey, like the local temperature or the rate at which a given cell was filled.
Certainly, some of the pollutants they are looking for would be affected by the evaporative rate of the water in the nectar, and without frequent monitoring and much higher precision data logging, i don't really know how you'd measure that.
So in summary: there is no guarantee that bees will go a certain place, much less at a certain time, nor is there any uniformity in how much work they do, nor in how they put up the nectar, nor in how they create the honey.
If the experiment is "i wonder how many airborne pollutants show up in a beehive after 1 season", then fine. But i wouldn't use it to measure anything else. I wouldn't even compare it to other beehives to see if airports create more pollution -- the activity of a given colony is simply not uniform.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Beekeeper 2: Yes, a little too quiet, if you know what I mean.
Beekeeper 1: Hmm...I'm afraid I don't.
Beekeeper 2: You see, bees usually make a lot of noise. No noise -- suggests no bees!
Beekeeper 1: Oh, I understand now. Oh look, there goes one now.
Beekeeper 2: To the Beemobile!
Beekeeper 1: You mean your Chevy?
Beekeeper 2: Yes.
The beekeepers track their bees down to Homer's sugar pile.
Beekeeper 1: Well, very clever, Simpson, luring our bees to your sugar pile and selling them back to us at an inflated price.
Homer: Bees are on the what now?
Beekeeper 2: Simpson, you diabolical...we're willing to pay you $2000 for the swarm. [starts counting money]
Homer: Deal! [thunder crashes, rain starts]
Beekeeper 1: Oh, wait a minute. The bees are leaving.
Homer: No! My sugar is melting. Melting! Oh, what a world.
the canaries had a better lawyer than the bees.