(Featured in issue two of Pebble zine)
Bees trained to sniff out drugs by latching onto their chemical scents could soon be swarming airports around the world. Joshua Saunders gains an insight into the future of a drug detection that’s set to sting criminals and those involved in narcotrafficking
Honeybees are currently being trained to
recognise scents such as heroin, cocaine
and other drugs in an attempt to crack down
on smuggling within airports. Their ability to
smell pollen from over a mile away makes
them ideal candidates for the new revolution
in drug detection.
One company, Hertfordshire based Inscentinel, are using Pavlovian conditioning - where a specimen is taught
to associate one thing with another unconditioned stimulus. This works for bees by conditioning them into associating the scent of a drug with sticking their tongue out for sugar.
The bees are introduced to the scent by pressing a button that releases the sample into their airstream. The scientist then touches the bee’s antennae, which is their way of detecting the scent; the bee puts out its tongue and is fed the sugar with water. The process is then repeated to analyse whether the bees stick out their tongues in anticipation of the scent and associate the scent, in this instance drugs, with being fed.
...
One company, Hertfordshire based Inscentinel, are using Pavlovian conditioning - where a specimen is taught
to associate one thing with another unconditioned stimulus. This works for bees by conditioning them into associating the scent of a drug with sticking their tongue out for sugar.
The bees are introduced to the scent by pressing a button that releases the sample into their airstream. The scientist then touches the bee’s antennae, which is their way of detecting the scent; the bee puts out its tongue and is fed the sugar with water. The process is then repeated to analyse whether the bees stick out their tongues in anticipation of the scent and associate the scent, in this instance drugs, with being fed.
...
“You’d see that the cocaine
bees are responding, not the
heroin bees”
Stacey Kendall, a junior scientist who carries out this research at Inscentinel says, “if they do that, it’s a sign that they have learned to associate the smell with the sugar. If they don’t, half way through the six seconds, you’d touch their antennae again as a reminder and then feed them.”
“One person can train 30 to 40 bees in a day, you start with bee number one and it will get exposed to the smell for the first time. You work all the way through to bee 35 and then go back to bee number one.”
Inscentinel condition batches of 35 bees at a time, teaching them in five cycles to ensure the 80-90% of the bees are trained in one day. “They can do it in one cycle but not every bee will,” she added.
From this, the company intends to provide cartridges of six bees in a vapour detector container, called a Vasor, to be dispatched to airports and other clients for use.
Stacey Kendall, a junior scientist who carries out this research at Inscentinel says, “if they do that, it’s a sign that they have learned to associate the smell with the sugar. If they don’t, half way through the six seconds, you’d touch their antennae again as a reminder and then feed them.”
“One person can train 30 to 40 bees in a day, you start with bee number one and it will get exposed to the smell for the first time. You work all the way through to bee 35 and then go back to bee number one.”
Inscentinel condition batches of 35 bees at a time, teaching them in five cycles to ensure the 80-90% of the bees are trained in one day. “They can do it in one cycle but not every bee will,” she added.
From this, the company intends to provide cartridges of six bees in a vapour detector container, called a Vasor, to be dispatched to airports and other clients for use.
The bees can be trained for over five
different drugs and can be taught to recognise chemicals found in the
explosive Trinitrotoluene, more commonly
known as TNT.
In developing countries, where it is more expensive to send a medically trained doctor to remote locations, the bees are being used to detect Tuberculosis. They do this by watching to see if they react to the scents given off by compounds found in TB patients’ breath, this has been noted by Dr Steve Chambers - one of New Zealand’s leading infectious disease specialists - as ‘the perfume of tuberculosis’.
One possible way of utilizing this new method of drug detection in airports would be ‘looking at the cargo going onto a plane not the people,’ which Stacey believes is an area that can be overlooked.
In developing countries, where it is more expensive to send a medically trained doctor to remote locations, the bees are being used to detect Tuberculosis. They do this by watching to see if they react to the scents given off by compounds found in TB patients’ breath, this has been noted by Dr Steve Chambers - one of New Zealand’s leading infectious disease specialists - as ‘the perfume of tuberculosis’.
One possible way of utilizing this new method of drug detection in airports would be ‘looking at the cargo going onto a plane not the people,’ which Stacey believes is an area that can be overlooked.
This would work by sucking air from wrapped cargo and then concentrating that air into a filter, then by showing the filter to the bees, you’d see which ones reacted by sticking out their tongue. “You’d see that the cocaine bees are responding not the heroine bees,” and from that be able to deduce that traces of cocaine are inside the cargo.
The screening process is far from the initial fear-filled conjurations of how people believe bees are going to be used to detect drugs at airports. Stacey says, “it sounds like setting bees on people but they are contained in a handheld hoover type piece, so in theory you’d never know that there are bees in there.”
Another way would be to partner the trained bees with sniffer dogs while checking luggage. Stacey explains, “they don’t have to replace sniffer dogs they can work in conjunction. You have a sniffer dog, it’s indicated that there’s something in someone’s luggage [you could then] take them to one side and use the bees.”
To train a dog to become a sniffer dog it takes on average six-months, and a further month to train it to another scent. Up to 100 sniffer bees can be conditioned to associate a scent with sugar in a few hours making it a more financially worthwhile endeavour.
At the moment only 35 bees can be trained by hand, but 100 could be conditioned with an automated conditioning unit, where the scents could be released directly into the machine along with the sugar incentive. While this approach may not be as thorough as conditioning each bee by hand Stacey says, “when you put in hundreds of bees it doesn’t matter if a lower percentage are trained, you still get out more bees at the end.”
Inscentinel are using European honeybees, officially known as the ‘Apis mellifera’, because they are one of the most commonly found species of bee, allowing them to be trained worldwide. Stacey explains, “they are not really special, they’re not going to be any different from those used by bee keepers to pollinate an apple orchard.”
Inscentinel are currently working towards a field trial, this upcoming February, with a FTSE 250 company that wished to remain unnamed.
So far, the company has faced little opposition from the outside world and animal rights activists. Stacey says, “we’ve had one or two angry emails or letters... but that’s probably to be expected.”
“It’s hard to know what’s going through the head of the bees, but they’re getting more sugar than they would be able to find naturally. If you put any stress on them there would be no point because they are not going to behave as they should, and may not learn or respond [to the conditioning]. Their life expectancy outside of the hive is just eight to six weeks so it doesn’t appear to, broadly speaking, affect them,” she adds.
After being used by airports the clients would then return the bees to Inscentinel. When the bees return from duty, the company intends to let them return to a normal life. Stacey says, “the idea when it was set up was that we’d get fresh bees, train them and hand them out to whoever is using them. Then when they return the used bees, we’d release them to a different hive, like a retirement hive.”
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