Click for home page
News

 

British bees box in terrorists. May 16th 2002

Insense Ltd, a UK Company has already gone one better than US Pentagon spooks in the war on terrorism by using a sophisticated interface between insect and machine to sniff out explosives. Whilst the Pentagon has trained bees to swarm around explosives, Insense has developed a technology which mimics the conditions found in the hive. Instead of roaming over large areas, the bees are maintained in optimum conditions within a portable mini-hive, which looks after them and reads their responses to chemicals of interest in the air.

After a tour of duty the bees are released to live out the rest of their natural life spans. Normally a worker bee will only live for about four weeks and literally works itself to death but while in the "Buzz-box" their every need is catered for giving them some relief from their relentless work schedule. Insense's use of the "Buzz-box", or bee hotel as the inventors think of it, has a number of advantages over the Pentagon's strategy of using swarms of bees. Since the Insense bees' environment is optimally controlled and they are protected from the weather they can be on duty at night or even in storm conditions. And because there is sensitive technology constantly reading the bees' responses, the results of investigations undertaken by Insense are standardised and predictable. Insense scientists are able to condition the bees by associating volatiles from the substance of interest with food rewards. This again copies nature as bees readily condition themselves by switching from one food source to another as various plants come into flower. Bees have a number of advantages over sniffer dogs, the state of the art in vapour detection. Bees learn a lot faster and cannot be distracted from their tasks, nor do they have off days and the bees' sense of smell appears to be as sensitive, if not more so, than that of dogs.

The range of substances to which they can be conditioned even in trace quantities, is enormous so the technology can be applied to any situation where we need to be able read the chemicals in the air. Insense has chosen two lead applications, largely driven by interest from industrial clients and government. Security is a red-hot issue since September 11th and the company has successfully focused on the detection of Semtex, TNT and other explosives, and drugs. Insense is also developing a number of applications in the medical area looking at early detection of cancers and infections.

Introduction | About Us | Applications | Sensing | Our Bees | Technology | News | Newsletter | Contacts | Jobs | FAQs