Scientists want to turn bees into an army that specializes in detecting explosives and radioactivity

Bees have the advantage of being able to fly and move quickly, plus the ability to detect scents from long distances is great for detecting mines, explosive materials and radioactivity from afar.

In a project funded by the NATO Science for Peace and Security Foundation, training experts used bees to locate explosives, radioactive metals, and drugs. In some cases, bees will be more useful than sniffing dogs because they can work longer with less money invested in an army of bees.

Experts want to use bees to locate explosives, radioactive metals, and drugs.

Dr. Ross Gillanders, a senior researcher at St Andrew's University, has successfully developed a device that helps detect whether bees can carry explosive traces back to the hive. In the first trials in Croatia, researchers used drones to identify the source of any small traces that bees get to their nests.

Bees are trained to detect explosives that they believe are nectar from distances of up to 2 km.

According to Dr. Gillanders, once the bees are trained and released, they immediately look for explosives. Gillanders explained: "Basically, we teach them with something like a reward for training dogs. Bees fly out of their nests and diligently go into their daily work, which is to find But instead of finding pollen, they found explosives. The sugar syrup reward drove them to search for what people demand. "

But after three days, the bees realized that their reward came from finding explosives and as a result, they no longer care about finding explosives. It began to turn to searching for other things. Now the bees need to be retrained to find explosives.

In Croatia, tests using honey from local bees' nests began in 2017. Dr. Gillanders confirmed the bees found landmines and explosives buried underground in the fight for the fight. independence of Croatia during 1991-1995.

Honey bees can be used as a substitute for dogs to detect drugs at airports.

In the United States, bees were previously used to detect explosives in vehicles at checkpoints. Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico trained honey bees to extract their nets to detect explosives.

In 2015, researchers at the University of Cologne were confident that honey bees could be used as a substitute for dogs to detect drugs at airports.

Results from research in Croatia show that honey bees can completely clean up millions of dangerous mines, which are dangerous to people around the world every day.

The research was recently published in the journal Psychological Bulletin.

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