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WhistlingJack Joined: 29 Oct 2003 Total posts: 4298 Location: The Sewers of The Strand Age: 9 Gender: Unknown |
 Posted: 30-05-2007 16:35 Post subject: Croatian Bees Sniff Out Landmines |
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| Quote: | Croatian bees sniff out landmines
By Nicholas Walton
BBC News, Zagreb
A new technique to help find unexploded landmines using honey bees is being developed at Zagreb University in Croatia.
"We started this because our citizens are exposed to serious risks with mines," explains Professor Nikola Kezic, as honey bees buzz around his head.
"Luckily we also have a long tradition of keeping bees and making honey. Our solution makes use of what we have."
Croatia, like Bosnia-Hercegovina and the other countries of the former Yugoslavia, has a big landmine problem, inherited from the wars of the 1990s.
More than 1,000 sq km (380 sq miles) of Croatian countryside are thought to be contaminated by the mines.
About 250,000 mines are still buried, and more than 100 people have been killed by them in Croatia since 1998.
Removing mines is slow and very expensive. And even after the de-miners have done their work, some may remain in the soil.
Prof Kezic's idea is to use honey bees to find any explosives that might have been missed by the de-mining teams.
Training the bees to find mines takes place in a large net tent pitched on a lawn at the university's Faculty of Agriculture.
A hive of bees sits at one end, with several feeding points for the bees set up around the tent.
But only a few of the feeding points contain food, and the soil immediately around them has been impregnated with explosive chemicals.
The idea is that the bees' keen sense of smell soon associates the smell of explosives with food. So far this has proved successful.
Prof Kezic says that training the bees takes only three or four days.
The first day or so is spent in the large net tent, getting the bees used to associating the smell of TNT with food.
After that several bees are taken out of the colony and tested to see if they react correctly when presented with extracts of explosives.
"This year our work is to increase the bees' sensitivity to the smell of TNT," says Prof Kezic. He warns that it will take time before they are sure the system is reliable enough to use properly.
Once the technique has been shown to be reliable, the idea is to use the bees on areas that have already been de-mined.
The colony of specially trained bees will be released in the de-mined area, and followed with a special heat-sensitive camera.
The bees will be expected to settle on areas of ground that smell of explosives. If they land on an area where no landmine was discovered earlier, the de-mining team will investigate to make sure they have not missed one.
If the technique proves a success it might provide a cheap and easily available resource for de-mining teams all over the Balkans.
Other animals have been used before to detect explosives.
Gambian giant pouched rats are used in several African countries, including Mozambique, to find mines. Like the bees in Croatia, they are trained to associate the smell of TNT with food.
Dogs are also used to find landmines and to sniff out hidden explosives, for instance in airports. But unlike rats and bees, the weight of sniffer dogs means that they can be at risk of setting off the mines they are trying to detect.
Dogs have also been used for offensive operations in wartime. In World War II the Soviet Red Army trained dogs to run underneath enemy tanks. The dogs had petrol bombs strapped to their backs which ignited when they knocked against the enemy vehicles.
In the Croatian countryside bee-keeping has been popular for centuries. Delicious pots of honey and other produce can be bought directly from the bee-keepers at roadside stalls all over the region.
Despite many years of working with bees, Prof Kezic has not lost his enthusiasm for them. His office, full of charts, diagrams and models of bees, is testament to his interest in these social insects.
And in his fridge there is further evidence of what makes bees so special: pots of honey and some delicious honey-flavoured raki, the local strong alcohol.
Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2007/05/30 06:03:35 GMT
© BBC MMVII |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17938 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 21-05-2013 01:43 Post subject: |
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An update.
| Quote: | Honeybees trained in Croatia to find land mines
May 19th, 2013 in Biology / Plants & Animals
In this Wednesday, May 15, 2013 photo, a scientist inspects bees during a scientific experiment at the Faculty of Agriculture at Zagreb University. Croatian researches, working on a unique method to find unexploded mines that are littering their country and the rest of the Balkans, are confident they can use bees for detecting land mines. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
In this Wednesday, May 15, 2013 photo, a scientist inspects bees during a scientific experiment at the Faculty of Agriculture at Zagreb University. Croatian researches, working on a unique method to find unexploded mines that are littering their country and the rest of the Balkans, are confident they can use bees for detecting land mines. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
(AP)—Mirjana Filipovic is still haunted by the land mine blast that killed her boyfriend and blew off her left leg while on a fishing trip nearly a decade ago. It happened in a field that was supposedly de-mined.
Now, unlikely heroes may be coming to the rescue to prevent similar tragedies: sugar-craving honeybees. Croatian researchers are training them to find unexploded mines littering their country and the rest of the Balkans.
When Croatia joins the European Union on July 1, in addition to the beauty of its aquamarine Adriatic sea, deep blue mountain lakes and lush green forests, it will also bring numerous un-cleared minefields to the bloc's territory. About 750 square kilometers (466 square miles) are still suspected to be filled with mines from the Balkan wars in the 1990s.
Nikola Kezic, an expert on the behavior of honeybees, sat quietly together with a group of young researchers on a recent day in a large net tent filled with the buzzing insects on a grass field lined with acacia trees. The professor at Zagreb University outlined the idea for the experiment: Bees have a perfect sense of smell that can quickly detect the scent of the explosives. They are being trained to identify their food with the scent of TNT.
"Our basic conclusion is that the bees can clearly detect this target, and we are very satisfied," said Kezic, who leads a part of a larger multimillion-euro program, called "Tiramisu," sponsored by the EU to detect land mines on the continent.
Several feeding points were set up on the ground around the tent, but only a few have TNT particles in them. The method of training the bees by authenticating the scent of explosives with the food they eat appears to work: bees gather mainly at the pots containing a sugar solution mixed with TNT, and not the ones that have a different smell.
Kezic said the feeding points containing the TNT traces offer "a sugar solution as a reward, so they can find the food in the middle."
"It is not a problem for a bee to learn the smell of an explosive, which it can then search," Kezic said. "You can train a bee, but training their colony of thousands becomes a problem."
Ante Ivanda, a de-miner, searches for land mines in Petrinja, central Croatia, Friday, May 17, 2013. Croatian researches, working on a unique method to find unexploded mines that are littering their country and the rest of the Balkans, are confident they can use bees for detecting land mines. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
Croatian officials estimate that since the beginning of the Balkan wars in 1991, about 2,500 people have died from land mine explosions. During the four-year war, around 90,000 land mines were placed across the entire country, mostly at random and without any plan or existing maps.
Dijana Plestina, the head of the Croatian government's de-mining bureau, said the suspected devices represent a large obstacle for the country's population and industry, including agriculture and tourism. In the nearly two decades since the end of the war, land mines have taken the lives of 316 people, including 66 de-miners, she said.
"While this exists, we are living in a kind of terror, at least for the people who are living in areas suspected to have mines," she said. "And of course, that is unacceptable. We will not be a country in peace until this problem is solved."
In 2004, Filipovic and her boyfriend were on a fishing trip that took them to a river between Croatia and Bosnia.
"As we were returning hand-in-hand, my boyfriend stepped on a mine," the 41-year-old Filipovic said. "It was an awful, deafening explosion ... thousands of shrapnel parts went flying, hundreds ending up in my body. He was found dead several meters away, while I remained in a pool of blood sitting on the ground."
She sued the Croatian government, saying the area wasn't clearly marked as a former minefield.
"At first I thought I was asleep," she recalled. "Then I heard the voice of my father. I opened my eyes, and saw nothing. I thought I lost my eyes."
Ante Ivanda, a de-miner, searches for land mines in Petrinja, central Croatia, Friday, May 17, 2013. Croatian researches, working on a unique method to find unexploded mines that are littering their country and the rest of the Balkans, are confident they can use bees for detecting land mines. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
The government admitted guilt in the case for failing to keep the minefield sign, but the court has yet to determine financial compensation.
It may be a while before the honeybees hit real minefields, Kezic said. First, they will conduct controlled tests, with real mines but which are marked.
Kezic said American researchers have in the past experimented with mine-searching bees, but TNT—the most common explosive used in the Balkan wars—wasn't part of their experiment because its smell evaporates quickly, and only small traces remain after time. Rats and dogs are also used to detect explosives worldwide, but unlike bees, they could set off blasts on the minefields because of their weight.
Even after the de-miners have done their job in an area, some land mines are missed and remain in the soil, and they are most often the cause of deadly explosions. Once the experiment with bees proves scientifically reliable, the idea is to use them in the areas that have already been de-mined, where their movement would be followed with heat-seeking cameras, Kezic said.
"We are not saying that we will discover all the mines on a minefield, but the fact is that it should be checked if a minefield is really de-mined," he said. "It has been scientifically proven that there are never zero mines on a de-mined field, and that's where bees could come in."
© 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
"Honeybees trained in Croatia to find land mines." May 19th, 2013. http://phys.org/news/2013-05-honeybees-croatia.html |
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