Could bees become the next sniffer dogs?
The COVID-19 pandemic has seen scientists try everything they can think of to try and stem the spread of the disease.
The latest idea involves bees.
Following on from researchers for BC Infectious Diseases finding dogs could be used to detect which patients were infected with coronavirus at a success rate of 94 percent, scientists in the Netherlands have tried the same thing with bees.
In controlled tests with 150 bees at the biosafety lab of Wageningen Bioveterinary Research, scientists were able to train the bees to detect positive coronavirus samples collected from minks infected with the disease.
After a lengthy training period, the bees were then able to detect COVID-19 in human samples.
“The bees extended their tongues to collect the sugar water solution. By repeating this action several times, the bees associated the sugar reward with the scent as a stimulus,” the report stated.
“With this repeated conditioning, soon enough bees started extending their tongues out for the scent alone, with no reward as a follow-up.”
According to InsectSense, bees can detect volatile compounds in concentrations of parts per billion to parts per trillion due to their extremely sensitive olfactory receptors. This makes them ideal for the detection of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) present in extremely low amounts.
The researchers have also developed “BeeSense”, a machine prototype that can automatically train lots of bees simultaneously and includes a biosensor that deploys the trained bees for diagnosis.
The scientists involved in the study also believe the BeeSense could be a useful diagnostic system in developing countries where access to high-end technology, such as PCR machines, is more limited.