According to Anna Khot of The Naked Scientists, honey bees can be the answer to Britain's national security threats and drug smuggling. It is a known fact that honeybees have a great sense of smell and scientists are taking advantage of this fact by training them to sniff out drugs and explosives. They are able to train the bees by associating an odor with a reward. “Bees are at least as good as sniffer dogs but are cheaper and faster to train, and available in much larger numbers. It is dependent on the specific odor, but bees can detect some odors that are present in parts per trillion - that’s equivalent to detecting a grain of salt in an Olympic-sized swimming pool,” says Dr. Nesbit, a research scientist at Insentience Ltd.
The process of training the bees is a simple one. They are placed in a holder where different odors are passed over them. Every time they smell an odor a small dose of sugar syrup is administered to them and they stick their “tongues” out to receive the award. After a few rounds of this, the bees stick their “tongues” out after smelling the odor without a reward being present. Once trained, up to 36 bees are loaded into a hand held sensing device. The bees can be trained to detect the same odor, or smaller groups of bees can be trained to detect different odors within the same device. The bees are exposed to a constant stream of clean, filtered air until a sample of air from an area requiring testing is sucked into the machine. An optical sensor records any bees extending their “tongues,” which is then interpreted by software. Based on a statistical population of bees, a simple odor present/absent response follows. The whole detection process takes around six seconds.
This article really caught my eye just because it's bout bees! Who would've thought bees could be used for anything other than producing honey (or causing allergic reactions). I feel that this could really become useful in the future once perfected. It's easier to train hundreds of bees than dogs!
That is amazing that bees can be trained so easily. I would have never thought that, but I still think dogs are a more dependable choice. They are more loyal and obedient, qualities a bee could never have.
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