The fight against the coronavirus pandemic has scientists tapping an unlikely resource: the finely tuned olfactory sense of bees.
Dutch researchers on Monday said they have trained honeybees to stick out their tongues when presented with the virus’s unique scent, acting as a kind of rapid test.
Although it’s a less conventional method than lab tests, the scientists said teaching bees to diagnose the coronavirus could help fill a gap in low-income countries with limited access to more sophisticated technology, like materials for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.
“Not all laboratories have that, especially in smaller-income countries,” said Wim van der Poel, a professor at Wageningen University, which led the research. “Bees are everywhere, and the apparatus is not very complicated.”
The scientists trained roughly 150 bees with a Pavlovian conditioning method in which they gave the insects a sugar-water solution each time they were exposed to the smell of the coronavirus. When the bees were presented with a sample that was negative for the virus, they received no reward.
After repeatedly extending their tongues — technically called proboscises — for the sugar water, the scientists said the bees learned to stick out their tongues for a positive sample, even with no reward offered. Within hours, the insects were trained to identify the virus a few seconds after encountering it, the researchers said.
While the research continues, van der Poel said the scientists believe they can achieve about a 95 percent accuracy rate if they use multiple insects to sniff each sample. Their results have not yet been published or peer-reviewed.
“Our first goal was to demonstrate that we could train bees to do this, and that’s where we succeeded,” van der Poel said. “And now we are calculating, and we are continuing the work to see how sensitive the method is.”
The idea for the research sprang from the founders of Dutch insect-technology start-up InsectSense, who had previously used bees to detect mineral-rich ore and land mines. When staff realized they could also train bees to find the coronavirus, they looped in the university researchers.
The fight against the coronavirus pandemic has scientists tapping an unlikely resource: the finely tuned olfactory sense of bees.
Dutch researchers on Monday said they have trained honeybees to stick out their tongues when presented with the virus’s unique scent, acting as a kind of rapid test.
Although it’s a less conventional method than lab tests, the scientists said teaching bees to diagnose the coronavirus could help fill a gap in low-income countries with limited access to more sophisticated technology, like materials for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.
“Not all laboratories have that, especially in smaller-income countries,” said Wim van der Poel, a professor at Wageningen University, which led the research. “Bees are everywhere, and the apparatus is not very complicated.”
The scientists trained roughly 150 bees with a Pavlovian conditioning method in which they gave the insects a sugar-water solution each time they were exposed to the smell of the coronavirus. When the bees were presented with a sample that was negative for the virus, they received no reward.
After repeatedly extending their tongues — technically called proboscises — for the sugar water, the scientists said the bees learned to stick out their tongues for a positive sample, even with no reward offered. Within hours, the insects were trained to identify the virus a few seconds after encountering it, the researchers said.
While the research continues, van der Poel said the scientists believe they can achieve about a 95 percent accuracy rate if they use multiple insects to sniff each sample. Their results have not yet been published or peer-reviewed.
“Our first goal was to demonstrate that we could train bees to do this, and that’s where we succeeded,” van der Poel said. “And now we are calculating, and we are continuing the work to see how sensitive the method is.”
The idea for the research sprang from the founders of Dutch insect-technology start-up InsectSense, who had previously used bees to detect mineral-rich ore and land mines. When staff realized they could also train bees to find the coronavirus, they looped in the university researchers.