A recent study reveals that honey bees that are born with the strongest odour sense can be used for detecting cancer and other diseases.
A designer Susana Sores devised a device which can be used to train honey bees to detect cancer. Surprisingly, it just takes 10 minutes to train a honey bee and the trained bees can detect diseased odour in less than five minutes, reveals a recent post on Daily Mail.
Soares's latest discovery was showcased at the Dutch Design Week, in Eindhoven, last month.
The device comprises of two parts. When a person exhales into a chamber where the bees are there the bees move into the other chamber if they detect an odour. "Trained bees only rush into the smaller chamber if they can detect the odour on the patient's breath that they have been trained to target," explained Soares during her presentation at the Dutch Design Week, reports Dezeen.
The training process is simple enough where the bees are primarily exposed to the specific odour and then fed on a sugar solution (sugar and water). The bees once trained on an odour never forget it throughout their life of they are rewarded with a sugar solution every time. According to Soares, she has been receiving a lot of queries about this cost effective method to detect cancer and related diseases, in early stages.
Bees have been also trained earlier to detect bombs. Researchers at Inscentinel, UK, claim that honey bees have got better smelling capabilities than sniffer dogs and can detect explosives.