Bees are highly organized and industrious insects that have both fascinated and served us well, pollinating
crops and supplying honey. Now it appears that bees may even be able to save human lives, by detecting the
location of landmines. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by DuPont.
“Bees, on a day-to-day basis, their job in life is to forage, which means they go out into the field and they bring
back pollen, they bring back dust particles, there are electrostatically charged hairs on their body, and we’re
seeing if bees can be used as a way to sample a large area in order to determine if there are landmines in that
area.” Susan Bender is a scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. She says that landmines leak
TNT and other explosives into the soil, and thus into plants. And so bees unintentionally bring that material back
into the hive with their pollen. And because bees are known to travel up to two miles away from their hive, one
beehive could be a pretty good indicator of the presence of landmines over a relatively large area. Scientists are
also training bees to be attracted to TNT. Those trained bees could then be released in areas with suspected
landmines.
“A question was asked to us at one time, ‘Do we feel this is a good use of government money?, and my
response was ‘Well, what kind of value do you put on a life?’
If you’d like to hear some of your favorite Pulse of the Planet stories again online, please visit our website at
www.nationalgeographic.com. Pulse of the Planet is presented by DuPont, bringing you the miracles of science,
with additional support provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.