Laser Bees

My bees are used in various research projects at MSU. Perhaps the most interesting one is Joe Shaw's work on using LIDAR (similar concept to radar, but using laser light pulses instead of radio waves) to map the location of foraging honey bees. Scientists at University of Montana in Missoula have developed techniques to train honey bees to detect landmines (or other ordors of interest), but needed a way to map the location of where the bees hover over a suspected landmine. Shaw's lab is working on mapping bees by measuring the back scattered energy from the wing beats, which would be different than leaves moving in the breeze or other insects. For more details on the process check out an article from Applied Optics - Don't worry there are pictures and diagrams to diffuse the physics speak.

The 'photo' is actually thermal image data of two of my hives. The darker the red, the hotter the hive. One hive is strong and one is weak. The same lab is working with thermal imaging to detect colonies weakened from disease, CCD....