Posted on 12/08/2006 3:00:37 PM PST by Mr. Brightside
Study says bees can find explosives
By DEBORAH BAKER, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 27 minutes ago
SANTA FE, N.M. - Here's the latest buzz on detecting explosives: bomb-sniffing bees. A study at Los Alamos National Laboratory has found that honeybees can be trained to detect explosives, even in tiny quantities. "These bees really perform," said bee biologist Timothy Haarmann, the study's leader.
Whether honeybees will ever be enlisted in the war on terror looks doubtful at this point.
In thousands of trials conducted over the past 18 months at the nuclear weapons lab, bees stuck out their tongues when they smelled explosives. The bees even underwent field trials, successfully sniffing out explosives in a simulated roadside bomb, in a vehicle, and on a person rigged like a suicide bomber.
The insects have a phenomenal sense of smell, rivaling that of dogs, Haarmann said.
"The beauty of the bee is that when it has a sugar water reward, it sticks out its proboscis," the scientist said. "It's not a little tiny tongue. It's bigger than the antennae."
The study was funded by a grant of about $1.5 million from the Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which studies innovative and sometimes positively strange technology that could yield national security benefits.
Despite the positive test results, DARPA said it does not see a future for bomb-detecting bees in the military.
"Bees are not reliable enough for military tactical use at this point," the agency said in a statement this week. "We see no clear pathway to make them reliable enough to make it worth risking the lives of our service men and women."
In a follow-up interview, DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker said: "We're done in this research area. We don't plan any further investment."
Haarmann said that does not preclude another federal agency, or a private company, from refining the technology and developing other uses for bomb-sniffing bees — at airports, for example, or at the nation's borders.
"It's not far off in the future, if somebody decides to do it," he said.
The researchers found that ordinary honeybees can readily be trained by being exposed to the odor of an explosive, then given sugar water as a reward. After a few times, the bee, anticipating the sugar water, will stick out its tongue at the smell of the explosive.
The Los Alamos study was designed to test technology pioneered by a small British biotechnology company, Inscentinel. The company has developed a small portable sensing unit — a box, basically — into which three strapped-down bees are placed. The bees' so-called proboscis extension reflexes are automatically detected by a camera and associated software, with the results available on a laptop computer.
Haarmann said the study showed that trained bees can detect explosives in a parts-per-trillion concentration, even when masked by other odors.
While that is similar to what dogs can do, Haarmann said, there are situations in which using bees might be preferable. The bee box, he suggested, could be held by a robotic device right next to a suspected bomb while the operator watched the laptop from a safe distance.
The Army figured this out almost two years ago. It turns out that the bees don't like it when its too hot or too cold. They don't do well in wind and don't like blowing sand. In other words, almost every day in Iraq is not a good day for bees.
The Army thanked the scientists for their idea and sent them on their way. Looks like they went to DARPA and got $1.5m.
I didn't even know they had mouths.
Oh great. Now we're going to have to go through giant beehives at the airport screening.
So...one peaceful summer day you're sitting in the field having a picnic. You reach out to open the basket, when suddenly you notice that all of the bees are sticking out their tongues at you. What do you do?
Maybe fit them with Tongue Detection Units, or TDUs.
Bees become quite comfortable and tolerant of their keeper.
If treated gently and not threatened they get along well.
They will even tolerate a jarring event if not common.
The problem with this study is that no effort was made to actually communicate at bee level. They can and do communicate and sticking out proboscis is a Pavlovian response rather than actual communication. Knowing bees can detect explosives should induce study to learn how the massage can be communicated at a higher, more detailed level.
Bees become quite comfortable and tolerant of their keeper.
If treated gently and not threatened they get along well.
They will even tolerate a jarring event if not common.
The problem with this study is that no effort was made to actually communicate at bee level. They can and do communicate and sticking out proboscis is a Pavlovian response rather than actual communication. Knowing bees can detect explosives should induce study to learn how the massage can be communicated at a higher, more detailed level.
Do you mean to refer to getting or to giving bee massages? ...And what have massages got to do with explosives or bee tongues? :-P
There you go, drop a zillion bees on iraq with explosive detecting noses and poison stingers....
Great, now maybe they can train the bees to find all those missing security discs and laptops that keep disappearing from Los Alamos.
......Do you mean to refer to getting or to giving bee massages? ...And what have massages got to do with explosives or bee tongues.......
Communicate implies twoway information flow. We have determined how to receive certain bee internal colony messages but don't know how to send such messages.
The detection of explosives is an exercise similar to research on alerting the colony to water and nectar. In this case the extension of the tongue is like a Pavlovian reflex to sugar water. Pavlov's dogs salivated when the bell rang. The bees extend the proboscis when they smell explosives.
The link is that we know that bees can communicate very complex information and can in fact detect explosives. If we knew more about the complex bee communication, we could improve on the amount of info known about explosives.
Bees are able to communicate within their colony the presence, precise location and relative quantity of nectar bearing flowers and water. The trick would be to learn to communicate the same data for bee detectable explosives or other substances with a complex odor signature.
Did you see this thread?
Do you have any bee communication thoughts to add?
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