Bees and Bombs
Exactly how long does it take to train a bee to do something?
A new technique to help find unexploded landmines using honey bees is being developed at Zagreb University in Croatia.
“We started this because our citizens are exposed to serious risks with mines,” explains Professor Nikola Kezic, as honey bees buzz around his head.
“Luckily we also have a long tradition of keeping bees and making honey. Our solution makes use of what we have.”
Croatia, like Bosnia-Hercegovina and the other countries of the former Yugoslavia, has a big landmine problem, inherited from the wars of the 1990s. More than 1,000 sq km (380 sq miles) of Croatian countryside are thought to be contaminated by the mines. About 250,000 mines are still buried, and more than 100 people have been killed by them in Croatia since 1998.
Removing mines is slow and very expensive. And even after the de-miners have done their work, some may remain in the soil. Field testing is the next step after trials in the tent. Prof Kezic’s idea is to use honey bees to find any explosives that might have been missed by the de-mining teams. Training the bees to find mines takes place in a large net tent pitched on a lawn at the university’s Faculty of Agriculture. A hive of bees sits at one end, with several feeding points for the bees set up around the tent. But only a few of the feeding points contain food, and the soil immediately around them has been impregnated with explosive chemicals. The idea is that the bees’ keen sense of smell soon associates the smell of explosives with food. So far this has proved successful.
Prof Kezic says bees can quickly be trained to detect explosives and that it takes only three or four days. The first day or so is spent in the large net tent, getting the bees used to associating the smell of TNT with food. After that several bees are taken out of the colony and tested to see if they react correctly when presented with extracts of explosives.
“This year our work is to increase the bees’ sensitivity to the smell of TNT,” says Prof Kezic. He warns that it will take time before they are sure the system is reliable enough to use properly.
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