If honeybees can be trained to locate the chemical components of explosives, the ability to track bees and analyze their hives could help pinpoint landmines or unexploded ammunition in areas that are too dangerous for humans.
Engineers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have modified commercially available radio-frequency tags for bees to "wear" so they can be identified. Special electronics and software also designed by Pacific Northwest are mounted on man-made beehives to "read" the identification of each bee from the tiny tags.
"Bees are like flying dust mops. Wherever they go, they pick up dust, airborne chemicals and other samples," said Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, an entomologist at the University of Montana, coordinator of the research. Bromenshenk has joined forces with three federal agencies and three national laboratories to conduct this research, which is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the primary research organization for the Defense Department.
In a field trial last May, several bees were outfitted with the tags weigh less than a grain of rice. Engineers determined from the testing, that the radio-frequency fields didn't interfere with bee activity, but that the tags had a negative impact on flight and so they need to be made smaller. North American Research Inc.is now working to reduce the size of the tags.
In the future, Sandia National Laboratories will evaluate the tagged bees to determine the greatest distance bees can forage and how long it would take for them to reach the landmines. In that test, the laboratory will track each time a bee leaves the hive, its direction of flight and its return time. A complex analysis tool is being developed by Sandia, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Environmental Protection Agency to be installed in the hives to scan for chemicals such as high explosives.
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