What ???

 

Honey bee.

Scientists in the United Kingdom, searching for new ways to detect  bomb  making materials, came up with a great detection device.  Its used when searching local storage facilities or suspicious shipments from out of the country.  A new UK funded company, Insentinel, discovered how to sensitize the tongue (proboscis) of honeybees.  This is what the  honeybees use to gather honey.  When sensitized, the bees associate the scent of various explosive compounds with food.  And it only takes minutes to sensitive the bees.  After that they can detect scents with part-per-trillion sensitivity.


Using a hand-held infrared device with the latest technology, including a light emitting diode (LED), the device shoots out an IR beam (like the TV remote).  If the IR beam causes 17 or more bees, from a team of 36 bees, to stick out their tongues at the same time, an alarm goes off.  In British tests the device is much superior to present methods of bomb detection. 

I guess the bees go back to the hive at the end of a day's work.  And one assumes they get plenty of time for gathering honey and other bee activities.

This has me wondering if some of that sensitizing stuff hasn't rubbed of on me because every tine I hear some politician spewing horse poop I want to stick my tongue out and give them a razz-berry.

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