Sniffer bees set to snare suicide bombers

Scientists say they have trained bees to sniff out explosives.
Sniffer bees with a nose for explosives are set to make a major breakthrough in the war on terror.

An extraordinary invention by a small British company is being praised by American scientists who have been testing it.

Researchers at Inscentinel Ltd, which has just three employees at its Harpenden, Herts, HQ, have developed an amazing "sniffer box" to harness the bees' incredible sense of smell.

Now Inscentinel is set to cash in when its box full of computer technology that turns honeybees into bomb detectors goes into mass production.

Bee sniffer squads could be on duty at airports, train stations and other terror targets within a year, say the scientists. Los Alamos sniffer squad trainer Tim Haartman, an entomologist - insect specialist - at the lab, said: "The technology is there. It's just a case of putting it into production."

A honeybee finds explosives by doing what comes naturally. He pokes out his proboscis - the trunk-like feeding organ with which he sucks in food - when he smells something he likes.

Scientists have known of the amazing sense of smell of the bee for centuries. The insects use it all the time in the wild when they're gathering pollen to make honey.

Inscentinel's managing director Stephen James thought this could be harnessed to monitor food in warehouses and detect when it is going bad.

But he was amazed three years ago when he discovered that as well as food and flowers, bees recognise just about anything that has the slightest smell, raising the prospect of detecting explosives.

They trained the bees to only extend the proboscis when smelling a particular explosive, conditioning them by giving them a reward of sugared water when they responded correctly.

A year ago Mr James took his idea to DARPA, America's sci-fi Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.

DARPA has a billion dollar a year budget and hands out millions for 'off-the-wall' ideas that could turn into major defence projects. They asked the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has 9,000 employees and an annual budget of $2.2 billion, to test Inscentinel's ideas.

And Los Alamos thinks the sniffer bees are one of DARPA's most successful investments.

Like all the best projects at the New Mexico lab where the first A-bomb was developed, the bee squad has a code-name - SISP, for Stealthy Insect Sensor Project.

Inscentinel showed the Los Alamos scientists that the bees can be trained to sniff out anything from home-made fertilizer bombs, through demolition dynamite to C-4 plastic explosives.

Unlike sniffer dogs which require three months training, it takes 10 minutes to train the bees.

After training three or four bees are put in a shoebox-sized "sniffer box", held in position on plastic mountings. Air is sucked by a fan into the box via plastic tubes and wafts gently over the bees.

If they detect explosives in the air, the trained bees all stick out their proboscises together.

A miniature video camera in the box is trained on them and is connected to a computer programmed with movement recognition software. As soon as the movement of the proboscises is detected, an alarm sounds to alert the security operator.

To avoid false alarms from rogue results, a single bee sticking out its tongue does not set the system off.

The idea would be to use the box at a security checkpoint, waving it around a person being checked, in the same way electric wands are used as security scanners at airports.

Dr Haartman of Los Alamos said: "Inscentinel are the pioneers in all of this. They first proposed the idea to the military and explained their technology and the training of the bees.

"They were really clever when they put together this box with the image recognition software. This is such a simple, cost-effective, and foolproof device that it should go into production as soon as possible. The bees can be used in either mobile or static sniffer boxes."

"We've tried all kinds of ways to distract the bees, even spraying insecticide into the airway. But as soon as they detect what they're trained to find, those tongues shoot out. They're amazing little critters."

Now Inscentinel and Los Alamos researchers are looking into other uses for sniffer bees, like detecting dry rot in old buildings, and drugs smugglers at airports.

They've already discovered that feeding them caffeine improves their memory, and they want to breed an explosive sniffing super-bee.

Inscentinel Managing Director Stephen James said: "Bees are incredibly versatile and their potential uses are enormous."


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