The Griz video came about when the Montana Commercial Beekeepers’ Annual Meeting was in Missoula the weekend of the annual Univ. of Montana Grizzly/ Montana State Bobcat game. The beekeepers asked if we could teach their kids some things for Science Fair Projects. The original idea came from Dr. Srinivasan who showed a video of bees flying through a maze, following scent trails. Dr Srinivason he could do this with symbols, scent, or a combination as honey bees went to follow the food trail.
My crew (students) were up for the challenge, but they didn’t want to use scent. They came up with the visual logo idea with the Griz (Grizzly) mascot. I built the maze.
Univ. Montana Communications gave a couple of our students passes to record the band from the sidelines. ROTC sets off a cannon for every touch down. We picked the bee that best matched the tempo of the music. Before the game, we sent the video to Communications. The day of the game, the video played on the jumbo screens at each end of the stadium.
I remember being stunned when I saw Srini’s video. I sent our version to him. He asked how long did it take – I said 2 hours total. That surprised him.
Srini did ground-breaking research on bee vision and applied it to guidance systems for robots. Simpler, more eloquent, and faster than any Artificial Vision based on mammalian/human eyes.
Honey Bees have more neurologic (Brains) resources than we have identified.
Dr Jerry Bromenshenk
Univ. of Montana, Retired but not gone
