Trained bees at airports

[drfraz]

If they've been sniffing drugs all day it might be easier to return them to a nightclub instead of the hive....

 

[Hivemaker.]

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=15302

 

[The Cumbrian]

So you've taken some bees form a hive, poured a chemical smell over them and rewarded them with sugar and after a while you take them back to the hive. Let's imagine what happens. Having lost their nest smell, guard bees jump on them and kill them. I think, in the circumstances, it'd be kinder & quicker to kill them after use than try and reintroduce them.

Adam

You didn't see the program did you?

Nobody poured anything over the bees they were exposed to the smell. Just as they are exposed to the scent of flowers when they visit them.

Why should they have lost their nest smell?

If death is so certain for them returning I don't understand how robbers get in or bees that return to places when a hive is moved beg to get into nearby hives.

 

[VEG]

Seem a bit weird but we put acid on our bees, put thymol in with them and take their honey squash a few, and customs are being accused of ill treating?

Yes I do all the above and I can live with it.

 

[Ely]

Is this a wind up? How the hell could you train bees to do anything? What a load of ...........

 

[The Cumbrian]

Is this a wind up? How the hell could you train bees to do anything? What a load of .....

I suggest you watch the programme on iplayer

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b019fx7j/The_One_Show_10_01_2012/

Basically it uses the natural habit of the bee.

Bee goes out finds a nectar source and remembers the scent. This is every day natural behaviour for a bee.

To train it you expose it to the scent and give it a feed. It automatically links the scent e.g. explosives to a food supply. Then every time it smells the scent it puts its tongue out to feed. The movement of the tongue is detected. It didn't say by what but I would suggest something simple like a IR emitter and detector each side of where the tongue will be.

 

[BeeJayBee]

Fascinating stuff.

I didn't see it, so searched for it on BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6970000/newsid_6976200/6976255.stm

The Inscentinel website says

Bees are not harmed undertaking their sniffing tasks and are comfortable throughout, only healthy bees work effectively.

After their working shift, the bees are marked (with a little spot of paint on the thorax) and returned to their hive where they happily live out the rest of their lives.

http://www.inscentinel.com/InscentinelLtd/Pages/Science and technology/beewelfare.html

 

[Ely]

Whats wrong with good ole sniffer dogs? They don't sting

 

[The Cumbrian]

Whats wrong with good ole sniffer dogs? They don't sting

They eat more bite and need exercised. Bees provide their own food and exercise.

 

[VEG]

They also take years to train and cost more than bees.

 

[busybee53]

If the bees are returned to their hives to happily live out their lives then why do they bother marking them? I am guessing that they will do it so they can find (and reuse) the trained bees.

 

[Gardenbees]

Is it me, or isn't there one huge drawback to using the bees' feeding response as an indicator of whether they have found something they associate with food? At least for security work, anyway.

The drawback is that, if you want to throw them off the scent, you can quite literally do so by putting a conspicuous source of honey in your luggage. The bees' tongues would hang out the minute they got near it, and the results would either be written off as a false positive, or else it would force the searchers to search through the whole consignment just in case the honey was there to throw the bees off the scent...
If this happened a lot, it would negate the time advantages of using bees.

With dogs there is less chance of a false positive, I would have thought.

 

[The Cumbrian]

Is it me, or isn't there one huge drawback to using the bees' feeding response as an indicator of whether they have found something they associate with food? At least for security work, anyway.

The drawback is that, if you want to throw them off the scent, you can quite literally do so by putting a conspicuous source of honey in your luggage. The bees' tongues would hang out the minute they got near it, and the results would either be written off as a false positive, or else it would force the searchers to search through the whole consignment just in case the honey was there to throw the bees off the scent...
If this happened a lot, it would negate the time advantages of using bees.

With dogs there is less chance of a false positive, I would have thought.

I assume two things.

Firstly the guys behind the idea have thought of this.

Secondly I seem to remember reading somewhere that bees once they have found a food source are faithful to it for quite a period of time. Presumably (unless my memory is playing tricks on me) they rely on this "fact".

 

[GaryBee]

There are several articles on the daily telegraph website.....just search for bees security tongues. There is also an article on the telegraph website that shows the device where the bees go...looks like a greyhound trap....but i could not locate it

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

No somebody doesn't but I fail to see why anyone should automatically assume that an organisation such as Customs who would ultimately be using this is staffed with people any different from themselves.

Perhaps I have been lucky in my life but I have reached and passed retirement age surrounded mainly by pleasant caring people who are no more likely to ill treat a living thing than I am.

You appear to assume all people don't care about living things in the way I assume you do.

Well - I'm in that job and I keep bees (and I'm a very nice person) so you're right there.
We've discussed this in great depth the last few days and I'm very doubtful it will work - you'll have to have a hive in each station, then find an officer who is willing and dedicated enough to basically be a beekeeper 'plus' - then what happens in winter with bees in a cluster? this seems far too involved and fiddly a scheme for our department to nspend loads of money on IMHO

I suggest you watch the programme on iplayer

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b019fx7j/The_One_Show_10_01_2012/

Basically it uses the natural habit of the bee.

Bee goes out finds a nectar source and remembers the scent. This is every day natural behaviour for a bee.

To train it you expose it to the scent and give it a feed. It automaticall links the scent e.g. explosives to a food supply. Then every time it smells the scent it puts its tongue out to feed. The movement of the tongue is detected. It didn't say by what but I would suggest something simple like a IR emitter and detector each side of where the tongue will be.

Yes but what happens when after the tenth time it sticks out it's tongue and it gets nothing (if it takes only one time to associate the smell of cocaine with food how long will it take the bee to realise this is no longer the case?

If the bees are returned to their hives to happily live out their lives then why do they bother marking them? I am guessing that they will do it so they can find (and reuse) the trained bees.

So every morning you sift through 45 thousand bees to find the dozen or so you marked? hopefully they're not out foraging for cocaine or just dead!

 

[Nic Rhodes]

I thought the whole point was NOT to re use the bees

 

[region2]

april fool!

 

[Erichalfbee]

Yes but what happens when after the tenth time it sticks out it's tongue and it gets nothing (if it takes only one time to associate the smell of cocaine with food how long will it take the bee to realise this is no longer the case?

I think this is the most sensible observation in this thread.

A most fascinating piece of research but I think that anybody wanting to take this to a commercial level is

Call me cynical but I can see a cardboard disposable sensor (hooked onto a reader containing all the expensive electronics) just chucked in the bin at the end of the day.
Who'se going to unclip all those bees and lovingly return them to their hive?

 

[Easy Beesy]

Fascinating! But in the end just another way to exploit their talents?
Eb

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

disposable[/B] sensor (hooked onto a reader containing all the expensive electronics) just chucked in the bin at the end of the day.
Who'se going to unclip all those bees and lovingly return them to their hive?

(well we all do) at the moment my lot, the police force, airport security,
some private shipping companies and night clubs use disposable (if there's a positive hit otherwise you reuse) kevlar weave swabs, we swipe the area we wish to test (explosives, drugs whatever) pop it in a machine which is heavy but portable - about the size of a small suitcase and seconds later the test results are printed.
A dustbuster type machine will never replace a dog as the dogs can cover big and inaccessible areas/hundreds of suitcases in minutes that's the reason we started using them instead of humans