In it for the honey… bees used to find landmines
THEY are usually found bumbling around from flower to flower, their concerns chiefly revolving around the collecting of pollen and the making of honey.
But now the humble honey bee is being hailed as a potential warzone life-saver after Scottish scientists managed to train them to sniff out landmines.
Researchers at St Andrews University let slip the bees of war in a former Yugoslavian warzone, teaching them to find unexploded ordnance by sniffing out the smell of bombs.
The buzzing insects were released and tracked across what was once a battlefield in Croatia, and then examined when they returned to the hive for tiny traces of explosives.
Once confirmed, footage from drones was used to pinpoint the spot where the bees had been, allowing recovery teams to go in and disarm any landmines they found.
Dr Ross Gillander, a research fellow in the department of physics at St Andrews, helped design the equipment which allows the bees to be examined when they come back to their hive.
The project borrows standard Apismellisera Carnica honey bees, which are trained over two days by placing sugar syrup on top of some TNT.
“Basically, we teach them by a version of reward like you do with dogs,” said Dr Gillander.
“The bees fly out of their hive to go about their normal day-to-day job of finding pollen, but instead of finding pollen they find explosives. It’s the sugar syrup, which draws them out.
“The training takes two days and is much faster and more efficient than training a dog. However, after three days the bees realise that they aren’t getting reward from the TNT and as a result are disinterested in it and look for other things.
“After three days we have to re-train the honey bees to detect the explosives.”
Remarkable video shot from a drone shows how the movement of the minehunting bees can be detected by infra red cameras. The footage followed the fluffy pollinators around in the test site, and when the bees stay in the same place, it indicates to researchers they have made a discovery.
Dr Gillander explained this was a first as the flying bugs “are very small and very fast, which makes them difficult to track”.
Honey bees have an advantage over sniffer dogs when it comes to finding explosives as dogs only work for 15 minutes at a time. Dogs, which are more expensive to train, see it as a “game” and quickly get bored.
Bees will work tirelessly and are not affected by the chemical compounds found in explosives. They can get to areas that are more difficult to get to than dogs.
Dr Gillander, a physicist, designed the equipment that tests the bees for explosives when they return to the hive.
The bees go through a special canvas-type material which is then exposed to light.
“A drop in light emission (like a light dimmer switch) confirms the presence of explosives,” said Dr Gillander.
Real-world tests started in Croatia in November last year, funded by Nato Science for Peace and Security, and using bees from local hives.
The types of landmines the insects are being trained to detect are Yugoslavian PMA-2 and PMA-3 mines, along with some Russian or Soviet anti-personnel devices.
The bees do have drawbacks, however. Rain and darkness will normally deter them from going out on their life-saving missions. Precise details of the tests are being kept under wraps for now, but Dr Gillander said the use of bees looked “promising”.
The academic revealed there had so far been just one casualty from the testing – PHD student James Glackin, who was strung three times while driving 6,000 bees to the test site.
The early results of the ongoing trials in Croatia hold out hope that more of the millions of abandoned mines around the world could be cleared up more quickly, sparing thousands of people from being killed or injured.
There are an estimated 110 million land mines lost across the world which kill or injure between 15,000 to 20,000 people annually.
The training takes two days and is much faster and more efficient than training a dog