Honey Bees Sensing

In the natural world honeybees show a remarkable, sensitive ability to locate flowers, nectar and pollen. Worker honeybees are foragers and can use a variety of scents and smells, present in a complex background of odours, as olfactory cues to help them locate food sources.

Odour recognition is also integral to many aspects of the bees' life including communication and foraging. Throughout its life a worker honeybee is constantly adapting, modifying and learning associations between odours and its environment.

Individual sensors densely cover each of the bees two antennae. The sensors are connected to nerve cells which are integrated in the olfactory lobe of the insect's head. Odour recognition is by a combination of specific molecular binding and advanced signal processing.

Insect olfaction and the bees' capabilities represent an effective, sensitive, ready-made sensing system that can be tapped into using innovative technology and protocols. Inscentinel uses the honeybees as sensitive, vapour detecting "micromachines".

Our "sniffer bees" are honeybees trained to recognise a specific odour. They are trained using a well known Classical Pavlovian conditioning protocol - a simple association of a smell with a food reward. The insect is exposed to the odour in controlled pulses and simultaneously rewarded with sugar syrup. After three to five presentations and rewards the bee is trained. When the bee detects the odour it expects a food reward and extends its tongue (proboscis). This response is a reflex action (Proboscis extension Reflex, PER) and is not consciously controlled by the bee. A "panel" of bees can be trained in as little as a few hours to remember a particular odour for several days.