UM scientist shares stories of Rumsfeld phone calls, possible reasons for bee colony collapse

Finding Land Mines by Following a Bee

Conditioned to associate explosive chemicals with food, bees can show the way to buried mines without risk to dogs or humans. Today's methods of detecting land mines has one problem: Whether accompanied by keen-nosed dogs or chemical-vapor detectors, human mine-sweepers still must step their solitary way through minefields. It's dangerous work, risking a trip of a fuse that could easily maim or kill. So to avoid that, a group of scientists is researching how to put a more nimble creature to work: the honeybee.

By conditioning a bee to think it's finding food when it senses chemicals used in explosives, a team of scientists from the University of Montana, Montana State University, and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration is trying to harness the bee's acute sense of smell. The group then maps the positions of the hungry swarms, using a laser-based detection method similar to radar, called lidar. Led by researchers Jerry Bromenshenk and Joseph Shaw, the team reported its results in a recent issue of Nature's physics journal Optics Express.

450-YEAR PROJECT
The work comes as part of a push by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is funding the project, and other organizations to develop safer and more effective ways of detecting and removing land mines. A deadly reality in much of the developing world, land mines kill roughly 15,000 to 20,000 people each year, according to a 2003 RAND Corp. study. They can lay undetected for many years, only to be triggered by an unususpecting civilian out for a stroll.

But finding and neutralizing mines is painstaking work. According to the same study, it would take roughly 450 years to clear all the world's undetected mines.

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Bees, on the other hand, are light, work for anyone, and can be "trained" in a matter of days.

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Bomb-Sniffing Bees Could Protect Military, Civilians
Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a method for training the common honeybee to detect the explosives used in bombs.

Based on knowledge of bee biology, the new techniques could become a tool to combat the use of deadly improvised explosive devices (IEDs) encountered by American military troops abroad and also an emerging danger for civilians worldwide.

According to Tim Haarmann, principal investigator for the Stealthy Insect Sensor Project, the honeybee's phenomenal sense of smell rivals that of dogs.

The Los Alamos scientists, including Kirsten McCabe and Robert Wingo, developed methods to harness the honeybee's exceptional olfactory sense where the bees' natural reaction to nectar, sticking out their tongues, could be used to record an unmistakable response to a scent.

The scientists began with research into why bees are such good detectors, going beyond demonstrating that bees can be used to identify the presence of explosives. Using reward training techniques common to bee research, the researchers trained bees to stick out their tongues when they were exposed to vapors from TNT, C4, TATP explosives, and propellants.

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US military trains 'air force' of bomb-sniffing bees
US military defense scientists have found a way to train the common honey bee to smell explosives used in bombs, a skill they say could help protect American troops abroad.
Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said in an online statement published Monday they had developed a method to harness the bee's exceptional olfactory sense.

"The new techniques could become a leading tool in the fight against the use of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which present a critical vulnerability for American military troops abroad and is an emerging danger for civilians worldwide," the research laboratory said.

The scientists used Pavlovian techniques on the bees' natural response to nectar, a sticking out of their tongue, or proboscis extension reflex.

By rewarding them with sugar water, the scientists taught bees to give the same reflex action when they were exposed to vapors from explosives such as dynamite, C4 plastic and TATP (triacetone triperoxide), often used by suicide bombers.