To Bee or Not to Bee … Homeland Security’s Future Stealthy Drone
Honey bees have been an essential component of human society for over 3,000 years. Although archaeologists uncovered hundreds of beehives in Israel dating back to 10BCE in the Solomon dynasty, it’s likely humans have been raising and controlling bees to produce honey since the “invention” of fire. In addition to the production of honey, bees are also critical to the pollination of nearly one third of our food supply.
The ability of honey bees to locate the nectar of plants and trees is accomplished by chemoreceptors in their antennae that detect odors. In fact, honey bees have 170 of these odor receptors, which is about three times the concentration of other insects. The honey bees “sense of smell” is so sensitive that it can detect chemicals or odors in concentrations of only a few parts per trillion. Their sensitivity is equal to or better than the best of breed canine.
Canines are trained to detect various drugs and chemicals commonly used in building bombs and weapons and are very effective in alerting officers to the presence of these materials. These canines are commonly seen with military personnel, community law enforcement officers, transportation safety administration officers at airports and train stations as well as customs and border patrol officers at border points of entry. So how are bees be trained to detect specific odors like canines?
In short, it’s the same way you train any animal to do almost anything: by associating a particular stimulus with a reward. The bees are first strapped into small tubes.
Then the smell of chemical components used to make explosives like dynamite or C-4 are released and wafted over the bee. Immediately following, the bee is rewarded with sugar water at the end of a cotton swab. Associating the smell of the chemical vapors with sugar water causes the bees to extend their proboscis, or tongue, whenever the vapor is encountered. Before long, the bees get the association and wave their proboscis in the air after only a few exposures to the vaporized ingredients followed by the sugar water.
The bees can be trained in as little as 10 minutes using the Pavlov’s reflex technique to target a wide range of natural and man-made chemicals and odors. There is even ongoing research to train the bee to detect certain biomarkers associated with diseases such as tuberculosis, lung, skin and pancreatic cancer.
There are several advantages of using these trained “sniffer bees” over canines to detect illicit drugs or chemicals. First, bees are cheaper and easier to train than their canine counterparts. Bees learn to associate the specific odor to a reward in as few as 10 minutes while dogs require up to three months of training. Additionally, the accuracy of the bees is about 98% even with the use of masking elements such as bug repellent. The accuracy of dogs on the other hand is roughly 70%. Bees are actually capable of detecting one explosive material that dogs cannot, TATP. This is significant in that TATP is an extremely effective explosive compound. Finally, the costs associated with training and maintaining bees are substantially lower than dogs. Quality trained canines can cost from $5,000 to $10,000 to acquire and another $30,000 annually to sustain. Bees come at a fraction of that cost.
There are, however, limitations to using bees for homeland security purposes. Since bees are “recruited” at the end of their natural lifespan, they are only usable anywhere from two days to two weeks. This constraint means a reliable logistical operation must be in place to keep a fresh supply of functional bees on hand for continuous operation. In addition, their memories of the smells and sugar water must be refreshed every 24 hours to remain effective. While the bee accuracy rate is extremely high, there are a handful of specific natural fragrances that can elicit false-positives. And, believe it or not, not all bees are created equal…some bees are smarter than the others and have better memory retention and there are some that just aren't trainable.
Alright, so if you’re like me you’re thinking so what? A bee can be trained to detect certain chemicals and with great accuracy, but how can a laboratory experience translate to an operational benefit? How could bees ever be used by the DoD to detect improvised explosive devices on the battlefield? How can Customs and Border Protection use bees to detect the smuggling of illicit materials across the border? After all, it’s not like you can put a bee on a leash and give it commands. Additionally, once it hones in on a trained odor how would the operator be alerted to a potential threat? As it turns out, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has been working on training bees since 2005 under a Defense Advanced Research Laboratory grant and they have developed a method to provide an immediate threat alert.
The bees are kept in their training tubes and several are placed in a special box that has outside air blown over them. A camera monitors the bees and provides an alert via a computer connection if the bees, after detecting the trained odor, are sticking out their tongues. Pattern-recognition software is used by the computer to pick up the waving proboscis by detecting the change in background contrast when the tongue is extended. The portable structure makes it ideal for testing in airports, subway stations and at roadside checkpoints in war zones. This technique also provides a more covert approach to conducting the search since the equipment is less visible than their canine counterparts.
While the honey bee will never replace man’s best friend, it will provide an effective and budget friendly means to detect and prevent potential terrorist activities.
