Bomb-Detecting Bees

jmichaelg writes: "The NY Times is running an article on using bees to sniff out bombs. Bees can smell scents that are diluted to a few parts per billion (the Times says "few thousand parts per trillion," but what do you expect in an innumerate society?) The bees are trained to pass up flowers in favor of bombs within a couple of hours using sugar water as the reward. What I found to be one of the most interesting findings was that the bees communicate what the target scent is so you only need to teach a few bees what to look for and they'll pass the word on to rest of the colony. The Dept of Defense is developing a radio transmitter the size of a grain of salt they'll glue to the bees to communicate where the bomb is to the bee handlers."

PPQ

[DaoudaW]

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.

Speaking of innumeracy, that would be parts per quadrillion, not parts per billion.

Re:PPQ

[oni]

that would be parts per quadrillion, not parts per billion.

I don't think so. Please correct me if I'm wrong here:

1000/1,000,000,000,000
thousand per trillion

divided by 1000 (lose 3 zeros)

1/1,000,000,000
one (part) per billion

Re:PPQ

[NearlyHeadless]

Hint: Compare "a few thousandths of a part per trillion" to "a few thousand parts per trillion".

Re:PPQ

[Verne]

1,000 = one thousand
1,000,000 = one million
1,000,000,000,000 = one billion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = one trillion

You americans are silly.

Re:PPQ

[oni]

That's funny. I actually looked it up. Here's what dictionary.com said:

Trillion:
1. The cardinal number equal to 10^12.
2. Chiefly British. The cardinal number equal to 10^18.

I did not know that! I guess we'll call that "a space probe crashes into a planet accident waiting to happen"

Re:PPQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's an American web site, what can you expect. The British terminology is actually also standard in other languages; the Americans are the odd ones out.

Hmm...another coverup?

[quinto2000]

this [satirewire.com] article at SatireWire might give us a clue.

the best idea

[tps12]

You know what would be way better than bomb-detecting bees? Bee-detecting bombs!

Imagine: a family reunion. Barbecue and beer in the park. The shady trees and babbling brook. Paradise.

Then: the buzzing of bees! A nest of trouble, stirred up by your mischievous nephew!

What to do?!?

Enter: your anti-bee force! A fleet of tiny jets, autonomous yet steered by a microchip! They soar around, bombing the bees with poison gas! The festivities continue, bee free!

Re:the best idea

[Atrahasis]

Naah - just carry a few aof the trained bees around with you everywhere, (and of course a bomb). When you set up your picnic, put the bomb a safe distance away, and release your bees. They will teach any wild bees in the area to congregate around the bomb. Then just detonate the bomb.

Re:the best idea

[wsloand]

Imagine: a family reunion. Barbecue and beer in the park. The shady trees and babbling brook. Paradise.

Then: the buzzing of bees! A nest of trouble, stirred up by your mischievous nephew!

"Jonny, quit buzzing like a bee... Oh well, he was an annoying nephew anyway."

Diamond Age here we come...

[tswinzig]

Will the bomb-carriers will have their own swarm of bees trained to kill any bees sniffing around in their vicinity?

Will they also train the bees to viciously swarm and attack the person carrying the bomb?

Don't need a Diamond Age

[devphil]

Will the bomb-carriers will have their own swarm of bees trained to kill any bees sniffing around in their vicinity?

They won't need to train anything. Just have some other bees, or wasps, or large birds, or my neighbor's dog, or anything else that naturally chases and [tries to] eat bees.

Will they also train the bees to viciously swarm and attack the person carrying the bomb?

They won't be able to train them; they'd have to grow them or gene-splice them or install little patent-lawyer brains in them (i.e., if it moves, attack it). But training them to attack something mobile that isn't threatening the hive probably won't work. Especially if the bees themselves are in the time of year where they're looking for a place to nest -- when threatened, they just leave. It's /after/ they've chosen a place for a nest that they get territorial and need to be viciously exterminated.

Why Bees are a brilliant choice!

[soulcuttr]

I can see in my head what will happen.

1. A bomb threat is called in
2. The local beekeeper is called
3. A few trained bees teach the beekeeper's bees in an impromptu training session
4. A voice over a megaphone exclaims "RELEASE THE BEES!"

And the reaction...?

People running and screaming from the building used to scream "There's a bomb in the building!"
Now they will scream "There's a bomb and BEES in the building!"

-Sou|cuttr

thousandths, not thousands.

[PhuCknuT]

Which was phrased that way because most people don't know what a quadrillion is.

few parts per billion?!!

[PaddyM]

No wonder those pesky bees are always finding my hidden stash of honey. And we're giving them radio transmitters??!!!

who needs a part in a trillion ?

[dario_moreno]

when we can make...MILLIONS !

More seriously : what if some terrorist
shows up at the airport with a friend
covered by pollen and sugar ? What
would be the bee prefer ?

And how do the bee teach to each other the smell
of TNT ? The dance they perform would be
interesting to decode from the semantical
point of view (I had read stuff about how
they expressed "next left relative to sun
after the tree 20 yards from the hive" )

Bees teaching bees

[DaoudaW]

And how do the bee teach to each other the smell of TNT ?

I just heard this story on NPR and the researcher described how to train the bees. Simply add the scent of TNT to a feeding station filled with sugar water. Pretty soon the bees associate the smell of TNT with food.

I'd guess the bees learn from each other in a similar way. They follow the directions (given in the normal way) to the feeding station and soon they too associate the smell with food.

Hmmmm...

[jo42]

What do they do, buzz out the chemical structure of the molecules or just buzz in Morse code?