Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: thedoc on 30/09/2016 16:50:49

Title: Can honeybees help national security?
Post by: thedoc on 30/09/2016 16:50:49

Honeybees are being trained to detect drugs and explosives, sometimes at concentrations equivalent to a single grain of salt dissolved in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.  But how and why are they being trained?  Anna Khot finds out...

Read the article (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/humble-honey-bee-in-national-security/) then tell us what you think...

Title: Can honeybees help national security?
Post by: tangoblue on 14/10/2010 02:23:09

A bee can smell1 Grain of salt in an olympic sized swimming pool (as the comparison to how diluted the drug can be for the bee to be able to detect it)? No offence to anybody, but science is getting pretty sad if they are thinking "Guys, know what would be so cool, lets train a bee to smell drugs, and just for fun, lets see how dilute the drugs can be before the bees stop detecting it".
heck, what are they going to train next, ants.... oh wait.... they have

Title: Can honeybees help national security?
Post by: Geezer on 14/10/2010 02:38:06

Quote from: tangoblue on 14/10/2010 02:23:09

A bee can smell1 Grain of salt in an olympic sized swimming pool

Fascinating! How did anyone manage to figure this out?

Title: Can honeybees help national security?
Post by: Bill.D.Katt. on 14/10/2010 03:18:28

@tangoblue, I think there are two important things to be considered here. In the category of "uses," it's great that they can detect such small traces of explosives, as many explosive detectors cannot detect anything but high nitrate compounds. That's a great advancement for airport security. Also the mere fact that they were able to do this is a very interesting scientific advancement.

Title: Can honeybees help national security?
Post by: tangoblue on 14/10/2010 23:35:52

I don't know about everyone else but i wouldn't like the idea of walking into an airport with tons of bees flying around, and i quite like entomology (excuse my spelling). Just imagine someone who was scared of bees, they would freak out!
At least people scared of the dogs know that the dogs are kept on leads.

Title: Can honeybees help national security?
Post by: maffsolo on 15/10/2010 06:10:51

tang The only people that need to worry are the ones carrying bad smelling honey.
Once science has it down pat, they will work on safeguards

Title: Can honeybees help national security?
Post by: tangoblue on 15/10/2010 19:02:42

Im still not convinced.

Title: None
Post by: Rebecca Nesbit on 03/11/2010 16:11:59

You don't need to worry about bees in the airport - they are all inside the handheld detector. So nobody would even know they were there - it's just a black box

Title: None
Post by: Rebecca Nesbit on 03/11/2010 16:35:22

When you say you're not convinced, is this by the technology or the fact that bees can be trained in this way? It's a technique that has been used in lots of studies revealed a huge amount about bee behaviour. If you want to read more see http://thesciencesays.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/are-gm-crops-are-better-for-bees/