Bomb sniffing bees

[dasa 0]

Pentagon trains bees to 'sniff out' bombs

 

Bomb-sniffing honey bees are being trained in the US as a new tool to fight terror attacks.

 

Pentagon scientists have succeeded in making hives ignore flowers and instead swarm around traces of explosives.

 

Bees have extreme sensitivity to molecular trails and are able to scour every minute part of an area as they search for food.

 

"It appears bees are at least as sensitive or more sensitive to odours than dogs," Dr Alan Rudolph, who is overseeing the operation, told the New York Times.

 

One plan being considered is to place a hive of trained bees near important security checkpoints and use them to guard against possible bomb attack by terrorists. The swarming detection system could also be used to find truck bombs and land mines.

 

Scientists used sugar-water rewards to condition bee colonies to hunt for DNT, a residue of TNT, in 99% of cases.

 

After one bee is trained to follow a different scent, it transfers the knowledge to others and within hours the entire hive, and often other nearby hives, have switched to the new smell.

 

A special radio transmitter the size of a grain of salt, due to be tested in the next few weeks, could allow individual bees to be tracked as they follow parts of bomb ingredients to their source.

 

Bees could also be used for sniffing out illegal drugs, which are easier to trace than explosives, the scientists said.

 

Pentagon officials told the paper that the idea of bomb-sniffing factors has a "giggle factor" that makes it hard to sell. Bees also have limitations, and do not work at night, in storms or in cold weather.

 

Story filed: 16:35 Monday 13th May 2002

 

 

[Pratyatosa Dasa 0]

Originally posted by dasa:

 

Pentagon trains bees to 'sniff out' bombs

 

Interesting! What's the URL of the original article?

 

 

[gHari 0]

To combat this, the pentagon has developed bee-seeking bombs.

[dasa 0]

If they could just cross breed the "bomb sniffing bees" with "killer bees" ..... after they find the explosives, they can attack the person that was trying smuggle em onboard!

[gHari 0]

Wow! If only the pentagon could convince brilliant God freaks like dasa to work for them, there would bee no jihad menace blackening the earth right now.

[Gauracandra 1]

Would these be called "buzz" bombs

[theist 1]

Operation Dessert Swarm?

 

Sorry, that was a cringer I know.We need a cringing icon.

[mahak 0]

just so they dont start separating jew bees from hindu and muslim bees, they will be okay. BTW, killer bees is a misnomer. as they move north their venom becomes less.

 

im buzzing off this topic, I get hives from reading this stuff, beesides, if yarnt careful, the gals will start cartoonin ya with more bees.

 

I gotta go tend to my apiary, perhaps devotees like balabhadra or tarun kanti should be consulted, as they are the resident apiarists in the vaisnava community.

 

haribol, ys, mahaksadasa

 

ps, ive never seen a bees "nose" anyway.

[Pratyatosa Dasa 0]

The Pentagon buzz: bomb-sniffing bees ( http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=54&u_sid=392041 )

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES

 

Scientists working for the Pentagon have trained ordinary honeybees to ignore flowers and home in on minute traces of explosives - a preliminary step toward creating a buzzing, swarming detection system that could be used to find truck bombs, land mines and other hidden explosives.

 

The research, under way for three years, initially focused on using bees to help clear minefields. But scientists since have broadened the effort. In two tests last summer, trained bees picked out a truck with traces of explosives.

 

"It appears that bees are at least as sensitive or more sensitive to odors than dogs," said Dr. Alan Rudolph, program manager for the Defense Sciences Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is overseeing the experiments.

 

The Air Force Research Laboratory at Brooks Air Force Base, Texas, has just completed an analysis of a round of tests of bees' bomb-sniffing ability. The bees found the explosive chemical more than 99 percent of the time, project scientists said.

 

For many years, biologists, notably a group at the University of Montana, have been training bees to prefer different scents, using sugar as a reward. After one bee learns the new cue, it somehow transfers that knowledge to others. Within hours, an entire hive - and sometimes adjacent hives - switches to searching for the new scent.

 

Scientists have found that it takes less than two hours to use sugar water as a reward to condition a hive of honeybees to eschew flowers and instead hunt for 2,4-dinitrotoluene, or DNT, a residue in TNT and other explosives, in concentrations as tiny as a few thousandths of a part per trillion.

 

In tests of 12 trained bee colonies last summer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, one to two bees an hour were seen flying around uncontaminated controls, while "we were getting 1,200 bees an hour on the targets," said Philip Rodacy, a chemist in the explosives technology group at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.

 

[mahak 0]

as a bee keeper, there is a very real concern. Something is wrong with the bees, and these wonderful creatures are also what is known as an indicator species. Like canaries in coal mines, we can learn much from the present demise of the bees, and the diseases caused by weather shifts, pollution, magnetic effects (i.e solar influences on earth's polarity) etc.

 

We worship bees, for they are Krsna's Gokula representatives (and even incarnations) while He is in Mathura. Pentagon likes to kill innocent devotees to further their weird Hiranyaksa imitations, so this news is not surprising.

 

Bombs, no I do not worry about them. When they blow, I go, but I guess that is a perspective of one who has been handling nuclear weapons for 25 years. But I would never send a bee into a reactor to find out if it is "CRIT".

 

haribol, ys, mahak

[Tarun 6]

Mahakji Honey: What's CRIT? Bee careful how u answarm.

25 yrs? How exciting! How enlightening! How glowing!?

Can we expect your Silkwood story soon? After 6 months? 6 yrs?

[mahak 0]

Crit means critical, meaning that the reactor is on and radiating.

 

Not glowing yet, but I have silkwood stories that I may write down some day. I am doing so now in novel form, a tentative story titled "Outta Kon Troll".

 

Im now out of the trident missile business, but the judge may order the Navy to put be back, so we will see how this long term exposure affects. The only thing I can see is my nervous reaction to rtvikism, and my aura seems to be a little like a borialis. Im off-grid, but so far, I cannot charge my batteries without my honda generator.

 

Haribol, the buzz bee with you.