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Bees have an impressive sense of smell and New Zealand biologists now believe they may be able to train them to help identify people with tuberculosis by the faint floral odor victims of the disease develop.
“When we tested them with the tuberculosis odours we found the bees can still smell it down to parts per billion,” says Max Suckling.
Christchurch zoologists are training bees to associate the smell of the disease with a sweet treat and to stick out their tongues when it’s present.
While TB is common worldwide, it is most prevalent in poverty stricken areas and the bees could provide an inexpensive screening solution for these people.
Link Via BoingBoing
Image Via Dendroica cerulea [Flickr]
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The next time you have a pesky swarm of bees in your back yard, don’t call the exterminator. According to a recent study, apparently all you have to do is pull out your iPhone.
The calls act as an instinctive warning to leave the hive, but the frequency confuses the bees, causing them to fly erratically. The study found that the bees’ buzzing noise increases ten times when a cell phone is ringing or making a call – aka when signals are being transmitted, but remained normal when not in use.
Way back in 2007, we posted an item about how cell phones might be responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder, which is affecting the world honeybee population. Now, scientists in India have published results of an experiment that corroborates the theory.
In a study at Panjab University in Chandigarh, northern India, researchers fitted cell phones to a hive and powered them up for two fifteen-minute periods each day.
After three months, they found the bees stopped producing honey, egg production by the queen bee halved, and the size of the hive dramatically reduced.
It’s not just the honey that will be lost if populations plummet further. Bees are estimated to pollinate 90 commercial crops worldwide. Their economic value in the UK is estimated to be $290 million per year and around $12 billion in the U.S.
The Mobile Operators Association in England, which represents British cell companies, disagrees with the results. Link
The Telegraph has more reactions to this report. Link
A few years ago, Alex ran a post on the Japanese hornet, a particularly large and “mean flying machine.” As pointed out, the hornets prey on smaller honeybees, but can often be baked alive by a swarm. Interesting, but that’s not what happens here as 30 hornets lay waste to a colony of 30,000 bees.
via Digg
For a few years, a British company called Inscentinel has been developing chemical-detecting honeybees for security and sanitation purposes. Bees are trained to respond to certain smells and then are loaded into cartridges that suck in air from an object. When they alert, the user knows that the chemical is present in the sample. From the company website:
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.
Although there are a variety of newspaper articles about this invention, I haven’t found the company’s claims supported by respected scientific periodicals.
Link via CrunchGear
Keeping bees is illegal in New York City. That doesn’t mean there are no beekeepers in the city; they just keep their bees hidden on rooftops. Now a resolution to legalize beekeeping is on the table, and many are interested in starting a new hobby.
Beekeeping classes in New York City were brimming with students this spring, partly because of publicity after a city council bill was introduced to legalize beekeeping.
On one Sunday in April the student beekeepers gathered for a live demonstration of hiving.
Afterwards they got two boxes; one with about 20,000 live bees, and another smaller one with the queen bee inside.
National Geographic has a video report, including an appearance by an underground beekeeper who is allergic to bee stings! Link -via Digg
