Sniffer bees in training are exposed to particular chemcial odours and then rewarded with sugar water when they stick out their proboscis - the bee at right has its proboscis out and is drinking sugar water from a needle and syringe (image: J. Thia)
Three weeks ago on Our Changing World we heard how important honeybees are as pollinators and honey producers, and at the end of last year we heard how bees could be taught to detect TB. Well, now these versatile insects are being trained as potential biosecurity agents to detect volatile compounds emitted by apple trees when they are being attacked by infestations of light brown apple moth caterpillars.
Alison Ballance heads to Plant and Food Research at Lincoln where Max Suckling and summer student Josh Thia show her how you train a bee. Honeybees are restrained in a plastic holder, and then exposed to an airstream containing a particular chemical odour. If the bee sticks out its tongue (the Proboscis Extension Reflex) then it is rewarded with sugar water. The bee is trained over a few exposures to the odour, and about 60% of bees seem able to learn to recognise a particular odour, sticking out their tongue once they have smelt it.
Max also shows Alison a set-up outside where he is training entire hives to act as biosecurity agents to find infested apple trees.
Max Suckling next to an infested seedling apple tree that is used to train whole hives of bees outside, and the training set-up in the lab for individual bees (images: A. Ballance left, and J. Thia right)
