Croatian researchers are training honeybees to sniff out undetonated land mines.
The unlikely heroes are taught to associate the smell of TNT with their food through a mixture of sugar solution and explosive material. The method has proved fruitful, with most bees clustering around sugar-laced pots of TNT rather than neat sugar solutions during trial runs.
The mines date back to the 1990s Balkan wars, during which time around 90,000 explosives were scattered throughout the country.
While de-mining efforts have been going on for years, they have never been 100 per cent effective and unidentified mines continue to present a threat for civilians and tourists, having killed 316 people since the wars ended nearly two decades ago.
The sniffer-bees are part of ‘Tiramisu’, an EU sponsored project aimed at locating and deactivating land mines.
■ The UK government has promised to draw up a Bee Action Plan – focusing on farming methods and town planning – to protect bee numbers from decline. The insects, whose numbers have fallen due to disease, loss of habitat, chemical pollution and poor weather, play a vital role in pollinating fruit and vegetables.
