Bees That Sniff Bombs

Researchers at a biotechnology firm called Inscentinel Ltd has developed a portable detector that harnesses bees’ powerful sense of smell.

Bees are trained to recognise particular odours (e.g. that of explosives) and associate that smell with a food reward. When the bees detect the odour, they extend their tongue or proboscis (the Proboscis Extension Reflex or PER) in expectation of food.

Honeybees make excellent detectors because they are inexpensive, quick to train (a few minutes per bee) and have extremely low limits of detection (odours can be detected to parts per trillion levels).

It would be possible that future detectors will use a range of bees trained to detect different chemicals.

Source: Inscentinel Ltd

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