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Scientists Glue Sensors To 5,000 Bees In a Bid To Better Understand Them
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the University of Tasmania working with CSIRO have decided to use the latest sensor technology to help them better understand the behavior of thousands of bees. An RFID sensor has been attached with glue to the back of around 5,000 honey bees in Hobart, Tasmania. In order for that to work, shaving the area of the bee where the sensor would sit was necessary in some cases. Thankfully the bee was asleep during the process, and the sensor is small and light enough that they likely won't notice it is there. With the sensors attached, checkpoints can be setup around the area where the bees travel and pollinate in order to create a three-dimensional map of their movements."
"RFID sensor" implies that it could sense RFID signals and not transmit them.
Unfortunately for the researchers one of the bees is named Fox Mulder and is about to reveal the entire operation to the colony.
So I've got a picture in my head of aliens doing this to us, and having this very same conversation about how we probably wouldn't notice. "Oh, hey bob... glad you're back! Gosh darn it, why'd you cut off your pony tail! and what's that thing sticking off the back of your head?"
...think of the bees?
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
It turns out, bees sting people.
Luckily the scientists now have enough data points to be pretty sure that is true.
Incidentally, they also prefer Aqua Velva as an aftershave, an unexpected finding as the scientists were sure they would prefer Burt's Bees.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
in order to create a three-dimensional map of their movements
More energy efficient (and anonymous) way for Google to build maps for street view?
In other news, colony collapse disorder... caused by glue.
A solemn salute to those postgrads that had to stay overnight to glue those 5000 sensors to those bees. I feel your pain, my fellow comrades.
I wonder if the sensors themselves interfere with the bees.
Imagine going to work tomorrow and finding everyone has a small blinking box glued to their head :)
I believe in free speech, I would rather glue 5000 bees to a censor.
-- Make America hate again!
As long as its one sensor per bee. I'd hate for them all to be glued together, no doubt forming mecha-bee-zilla capable of laying waste to entire towns. It's only at this point that people would realise that florists are our last line of defence.
How doth we study the little busy bee
Wearing sensors each shining hour,
To gather honey all the day
From every shining flower?
Burma Shave
[Apologies to Isaac Watts.]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"You mean your Chevy?"
"...yes."
Also, beekeepers like their women the way they like their coffee. Covered in bees.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Now we can finally learn the secrets of the Japanese Killer Wasps and tame them for use against meddling spies. Get to it, my little interns!
... how many sensors will I have to glue to women in order to better understand them?
No left turn unstoned.
What is it you do again son?
Well, last night I had to work late; I was shaving bees ...
Oy, my son shaving bees! What your father would say!
...they'll want to use bees for sting operations...
...wearing a foil hat.
The X-Files movie is coming true!!! Bee-ware the corn!!!!!!!!!!
..to glue tags onto 5000 bees? Workers only live for a few weeks, so unless they have a LOT of bee-gluers hard at work won't their tagged bees start dying before they finish?
^^^^ next headline
Surprisingly, bees spend more time scraping one another's backs and huffing than they do searching for and preserving food.
Last week, we put liquid paper on a bee...And it died.
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A nice tall glass of NOPE.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Attach sensors and then launch them into Tornado like in Twister.
Come on guys ( and the occasional lady), Where is the robotic version of the bee shaver and rfid glueing machine?? That's a much better use of post graduate talent. The eco-nazi's in Europe and the almond farmers in the US will pay millions for it.
The other aspect is to use the tags and watch the bees dance... that would need tags that are visually readable
That RFID tag is surprisingly large. I have seen "grain of rice" size tags used on fish.
I would absolutely love to be part of that. Colony Collapse Disorder is investigated for a long time and is still not understood. What happens is that you have a healthy bee yard with many hives full of bees (50000 each hive) and you come back a week later and they are gone, except for the queens and a few workers. What happened? They did not leave voluntarily, not without the queen. There are no dead bees in front of the hive, like you would have with pesticide poisoning. There is not one virus or disease common to those cases.
One possible cause could be the new pesticides called neonicotinoids, which act like a nerve agent. The claim is that the bees fly off to forage and cant remember how to get back home. But this is only a guess, and this experiment could give some insight. Do the bees fly around aimlessly?
Should we ban neonicotinoids? neonicotinoids are not sprayed but seeds are soaked in it. The whole plant will then be poisoned, but the poison is limited to the crop. One needs a lot less poison that with traditional pesticides. So this is an important question with huge commercial consequences.
P.S. Beekeeping is absolutely fascinating and addictive. The more I learn the more there is to lean. Call you local beekeeper's club to learn more.
Scientists Glue Sensors To 5,000 Bees In a Bid To Better Understand Them
See, this is why we need better documentation. I'm not sure why the scientists thought the bees would help (perhaps division of labor/hive mind or something?) but really, if the OEMs had made proper documentation for the sensors easily available, none of this would have been necessary.
Bees hate having sensors on their backs.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
A handsome research project woefully underpopulated by bees?
A large influx of bees ought to put a stop to that!
So I'll just leave this link here in case someone wants to read about it.
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Boy I wouldn't want the task of shaving and applying sensors to 5,000 bees. Thank god for grad students.
Somewhere there's at least one person with "Bee Shaver" on their CV.
"We have a dire emergency, and we hear you're the best. There's a rare species of wasp invading the U.S. and we need to tag'em before we can bag'em."
"Just tell me one thing: Where are the tweezers?"
-
In Soviet Russia, bees attach sensors to YOU.
It's so not-funny I can't believe nobody posted it yet.
Imagine Natalie Portman covered in hot bees with sensors...
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Let it bee
C|N>K
Bees participating earlier in this study received lower numbered UIDs than later bees. Bees with greater karma and more points to spend modded down less popular bees. Divisions between bee populations and resulting flame wars erupted throughout the hive.
Have gnu, will travel.
I read that as
Scientists Glue Sensors To 5,000 BEERS In a Bid To Better Understand Them.
Do they needs some help with that?
I can just imagine the response from the intern who was asked to do this. "You want me to do what? ... Wait, how many?"
Some people are saying everything is killing bees, and it's been nonsense.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So what do you do for a living?
I shave bees.