Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hello everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, your grin's
Speaker 1: the sweetest that I've ever seen. I'm Lauren vocal Ba,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and our host Jonathan Strickland is
Speaker 1: not with us today. He's out on vacation in the
Speaker 1: Fabulous Ireland. The fabulous Ireland. Yes, the the Ireland, not
Speaker 1: in Ireland, not just any old Ireland, that one specific one. Yes,
Speaker 1: we hope he's having a wonderful time there. We're pretty
Speaker 1: sure he is, according to social media, being chased by bees,
Speaker 1: which has so much to do with our topic today.
Speaker 1: We are talking about the future of bees, barring any
Speaker 1: any terrible future be tragedies, which I seriously am I'm
Speaker 1: hoping will not occur. Bees are awesome and we hope
Speaker 1: that they will have a very bright future. There's some
Speaker 1: slight concern about that, but also that they can be
Speaker 1: used for these incredible technology purposes. Yeah. In fact, we
Speaker 1: were inspired to do this episode by a Facebook message
Speaker 1: we received from a show listener named Taylor. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: sent us a note and explained that he is a
Speaker 1: technician who works with bees in his field, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to quote part of his message here because it
Speaker 1: was so exciting. Okay, here we go. Bees have an
Speaker 1: unimaginably keen sense of smell, so keen that they're able
Speaker 1: to detect compounds at levels our five thousand dollar machine
Speaker 1: can't even get close to. Our team has trained bees
Speaker 1: to sniff out chemical markers of plant and human pathogens
Speaker 1: in the lab, as well as invasive weeds and insects
Speaker 1: on the landscape while listening to this podcast, because he
Speaker 1: was he was writing in about a podcast about having
Speaker 1: additional senses in which I had mentioned being excited about bees.
Speaker 1: While listening to this podcast, I was conditioning a group
Speaker 1: of bees to detect and respond to the trail aramone
Speaker 1: of argentine ants so they can be used to locate
Speaker 1: their nests. We work with a team based in Montana
Speaker 1: called B Alert Technologies. There's a company in Montana called
Speaker 1: B Alert Technologies, y'all who have famously trained bees to
Speaker 1: sniff out land mines by training them on the scent
Speaker 1: of TNT, much like they do with dogs. Currently, only
Speaker 1: be sense of smell is better, and they don't trigger
Speaker 1: the landlines when they stand on them. In Sentinel are
Speaker 1: another B training company who are based in the UK,
Speaker 1: and I believe are working on border security applications for
Speaker 1: B based bio sensors. He also linked us to this
Speaker 1: hilarious promotional video for the in Sentinel B Sniffer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's basically a B dust buster, um like like
Speaker 1: this thing that is filled with bees. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about it more at the end of the podcast. The
Speaker 1: company might not exist anymore. Yeah, I'm not sure about that.
Speaker 1: One little note. The g c m S machine, the
Speaker 1: machine that Taylor mentioned, that's a gas chromatography mass spectrometry machine,
Speaker 1: which is a type of machine that's used to sort
Speaker 1: of like take a sample and figure out what are
Speaker 1: all the different chemicals inside it. Sure, it usually gasifies
Speaker 1: or basically burns a sample in order to pick out
Speaker 1: what's in it. Right, And so what Taylor was saying
Speaker 1: is that the bees can sense chemical compounds better than
Speaker 1: this really expensive machine. So let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about why bees are really cool in terms of
Speaker 1: both their amazing anatomy and also their their place in
Speaker 1: this proverbial circle of life on planet Earth. You know,
Speaker 1: I saw a movie called The Happening that was somewhat interesting.
Speaker 1: I have not seen that film. Actually, well, I won't
Speaker 1: spoil it for anyone, but there's a certain kingdom of life.
Speaker 1: Not going to say which one, but it's not animals
Speaker 1: that try to kill everybody. But there's a quote at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the movie. We're saying something like that
Speaker 1: if the if the bee were to disappear, humanity would
Speaker 1: be extinct within some short period of time, like a
Speaker 1: couple of years. Uh. That's perhaps overstated, but not entirely
Speaker 1: completely off base, all right, because about a third of
Speaker 1: the world's food supply is created when honey bees pollinate
Speaker 1: those crops. Um. Some crops in fact, depend entirely on
Speaker 1: bees for pollination. Almonds are the prime example here in
Speaker 1: the United States. Without bees, we wouldn't have California almonds, No,
Speaker 1: I know, right, Almonds are a huge part of my
Speaker 1: personal well being, so they're they're very important. They are
Speaker 1: very important. But if you want to know a lot
Speaker 1: about bees, I recommend the article how Bees Work on
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works dot Com um a k A. Our
Speaker 1: parent company UM, which was written by the esteemed Tracy V. Wilson.
Speaker 1: Who currently podcasts on stuff emised in history class, and
Speaker 1: who says, and I quote, bees are the greatest. Well,
Speaker 1: she's right, she is, She's always right. Um, So cool
Speaker 1: things about bees cool be effects. They can remember patterns
Speaker 1: like colors that that signal food sources, and recognize symmetry,
Speaker 1: a thing that is normally reserved for higher life forms
Speaker 1: than insects, those little insect brains. Right. Um. They can
Speaker 1: navigate by the sun, whether it's cloudy or not, because
Speaker 1: they can detect polarized light, so even when the sun's
Speaker 1: not out, they know where it is. Um. They have
Speaker 1: an internal clock, and they communicate via dancing. Um. They've
Speaker 1: got yeah, yeah, they they've got they've got the round dance,
Speaker 1: which is for nearby food and basically just says like food,
Speaker 1: y'all go out and smell for it. Um. And then
Speaker 1: they've got the waggle dance for far away food, in
Speaker 1: which they indicate the direction of the food that they
Speaker 1: have found in relation to the current and changing position
Speaker 1: of the sun. That's pretty cool. I can't do that.
Speaker 1: That's cool for many reasons. Number one, that that's pretty
Speaker 1: advanced in terms of sensing where things are and being
Speaker 1: able to communicate that. Number two, that's very social, right, right,
Speaker 1: being being able to remember that and wanting to go
Speaker 1: back to to your hive and tell a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of other things about it so that they can go
Speaker 1: out and do that thing. That's really good for everybody. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's just amazing that we have like communities
Speaker 1: of bees that communicate with each other that well, when
Speaker 1: when a bee is such a you know, it was
Speaker 1: an insect right there, there are I found out during
Speaker 1: this research some I mean actually a lot of bees.
Speaker 1: I think only fifteen of the world's population of bees
Speaker 1: live in hives like this. The rest of them are
Speaker 1: rogue bees that might that might hang out around a
Speaker 1: couple other bees for kind of like protection services and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But they yellow sharks. Yeah. Yeah. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: bees have, as Taylor said, an incredibly good sense of smell. Um.
Speaker 1: They can positively identify substances in the air at a
Speaker 1: few parts per trillion. I don't think I can do that.
Speaker 1: We know humans cannot. You cannot do that, Joe, neither
Speaker 1: can I. Um. And and bees and another thing that
Speaker 1: probably you don't do. Bees make honey from flower nectar
Speaker 1: by swallowing and regurgitating it a whole bunch um, thus
Speaker 1: sapping the water content from about in the nectar two
Speaker 1: about which winds up in honey um, and also adding
Speaker 1: enzymes from their mouths that help kill germs, which helps
Speaker 1: give honey that terrific antibacterial property. So it is true
Speaker 1: that honey is be vomit. That's delicious. It's the tastiest
Speaker 1: be vomit. So so so these these are reasons why
Speaker 1: I'm completely obsessed with bees. Well, I really like bees too,
Speaker 1: But Lauren, what is the outlook for bees? Are they
Speaker 1: going to remain happy and healthy and buzzing about on
Speaker 1: our planet as they do? Now there's some concern about that. Um,
Speaker 1: there's this you guys might have heard in the news,
Speaker 1: something called colony collapse disorder. Um, and worry about what
Speaker 1: this thing could mean for for agriculture and for even
Speaker 1: the environment of the entire planet at large. Um And Okay, So,
Speaker 1: so here's the deal with colony collapse disorders. Since two
Speaker 1: thousand six, honey bee keepers have been reporting record numbers
Speaker 1: of be losses every year, like thirty of their hives.
Speaker 1: Though the average is on the lower end of that, still,
Speaker 1: it's really significant. UM. According to the U s d
Speaker 1: a B. Populations in the US have declined from some
Speaker 1: five million hives in the nineties to only about half
Speaker 1: of that today. And this isn't from poisoning from insecticides,
Speaker 1: for example, which produces really telltale signs a k. A.
Speaker 1: Giant piles of dead bees right around the hives, but
Speaker 1: but from this thing that we're calling colony collapse disorder
Speaker 1: or sometimes disappearing disease. And that's because the signs of
Speaker 1: this aren't dead bees but rather missing bees UM and
Speaker 1: worker bees specifically, the queen and her male drones will
Speaker 1: still be occupying their hives, and the honey will still
Speaker 1: be plentiful in those hives, but the workers just sort
Speaker 1: of leave or or get lost during the winter season.
Speaker 1: Come spring, the colony dies. Okay, so this is sort
Speaker 1: of like if you're out on the ocean and you
Speaker 1: find a cruise ship floating there. It's not like you
Speaker 1: find it full of dead bodies and all their money missing.
Speaker 1: It's like the ship's just empty. It's like Roanoke. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just everything's gone and no one knows why. So
Speaker 1: spooky UM. And there are records of this going back
Speaker 1: through time, with specific episodes having been recorded in uh
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties, in nineteen o three, in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: and in the nineteen sixties. But it started becoming more
Speaker 1: widespread in the nineteen eighties, which happens to be round
Speaker 1: about when a bunch of new pathogens and pests entered
Speaker 1: the United States. So do we have any idea what's
Speaker 1: causing it? Potential causes that have been looked at have included, um,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different stuff, okay, pesticides, parasitic intestinal mites, UM,
Speaker 1: particularly cold winters, viruses, UM, contaminated or or scarce water supplies,
Speaker 1: pollen or nectar scarcity, UM or kind of bad pollen
Speaker 1: like sort of nutritionally cheap pollen, the twinkies of pollen, um,
Speaker 1: and and various stressors to to the hive, like like
Speaker 1: overcrowding or being moved around too much. So the message
Speaker 1: I'm getting is that we really have no idea. Yeah no,
Speaker 1: no one's been sure which of these are which combination
Speaker 1: is causing this particular phenomenon. Okay, well, oh yeah, So
Speaker 1: I'd imagine that all of these things might be partially true,
Speaker 1: but we don't know the main cause. Oh sure, and
Speaker 1: you know, any one of these will certainly cause damage
Speaker 1: to a hive. But but why bees are just disappearing
Speaker 1: like this has generally been a mystery, so we still
Speaker 1: have no idea. Well, as as of May nine, a
Speaker 1: report was published in the Bulletin of Insectology, which is
Speaker 1: a thing that exists, which is very exciting to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was published by a team of researchers
Speaker 1: from the Harvard School of Public Health, and they were
Speaker 1: talking about this research that they did in which they
Speaker 1: introduced non legal levels of particul pularly suspected insecticides to
Speaker 1: a few b colonies and also studied some some control colonies. Okay,
Speaker 1: so so good research practices. Yeah. And in one group
Speaker 1: of the insecticide exposed colonies were lost due to this
Speaker 1: colony collapse disorder. And in another study of the insecticide
Speaker 1: exposed colonies were lost. So I imagine that was a
Speaker 1: lot more than the control groups. Yeah, the control groups
Speaker 1: were not lost at all. Zero of them experienced colony
Speaker 1: collapse disorder. Um. One of the control groups in that
Speaker 1: study died due to a mite infestation. UM. But overall,
Speaker 1: other than that, the pathogen and parasite levels across the
Speaker 1: studying control groups, which contradicts previous ideas that insecticides are
Speaker 1: responsible for UM for making bees more susceptible to to
Speaker 1: disease or to these stomach mites. So what on earth
Speaker 1: are these insecticides? They're from this one group of insecticides
Speaker 1: called neo nicotinoids, which yes, are related to nicotine and
Speaker 1: UM and include a few very commonly used pesticides here
Speaker 1: in the US. At any rate, because they've been banned
Speaker 1: starting as of December for a two year research period
Speaker 1: in the European Union due to this suspicion that they're
Speaker 1: harming honey bees, which are important UM. Also that this
Speaker 1: research that the kids at Harvard were doing indicates that
Speaker 1: colder winters might be part of it UM as keeping
Speaker 1: bees warm and neutralized, full of full of good, happy,
Speaker 1: healthy food fed yes well not just fed, but fed
Speaker 1: with the right kinds of nutrients has had good anecdotal
Speaker 1: results among beekeepers there. There's apparently like a b protein
Speaker 1: shake sort of thing. It's called it's called Mega bee.
Speaker 1: It was it was developed. It was developed by the U.
Speaker 1: S d A's Agricultural Research Service. I know, right, beef
Speaker 1: up your buzz. You need to be on the marketing
Speaker 1: team for this chick. Um. So we're laughing a lot
Speaker 1: because bees are a little bit hilarious. Um. Also, the
Speaker 1: word be is really hilarious. You just append the word
Speaker 1: be too, basically anything like mega, and it suddenly becomes
Speaker 1: really terrific. But this entire thing is very, very sad
Speaker 1: and very scary. And I mean because I certainly don't
Speaker 1: want almonds to go away or any of the other
Speaker 1: important crops. I don't want bees to go anywhere. But
Speaker 1: if they do, do we have any kind of backup plan?
Speaker 1: That's what I wondered when Lauren said we were going
Speaker 1: to do this episode. So I actually looked up artificial bees,
Speaker 1: and what do you know, Bull's eye artificial bees. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the March issue of Scientific American had an article
Speaker 1: by Robert Wood, Radika nag Pool, and guyon Way where
Speaker 1: these three scientists discuss their work in creating artificial bees.
Speaker 1: The goal is to create a b sized flying robot
Speaker 1: that can be programmed to work together with thousands of
Speaker 1: others to form an artificial hive and autonomously pollinate crops.
Speaker 1: Their project is called Robobes, which I don't know if
Speaker 1: they have to feed the robo bees megabe, but hopefully
Speaker 1: they just have to feed it oil can huh Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't imagine that these robobes also create honey.
Speaker 1: It's probably just the pollination service, right, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean the crazy things we're doing with robotics these days.
Speaker 1: I didn't see any mentions of honey. But so instead
Speaker 1: of building thousands of a little like quad rotor drones,
Speaker 1: they're actually trying to mimic the muscle movements of real insects.
Speaker 1: So these artificial bees will have airfoil wings that flat
Speaker 1: based on actuators designed to work like muscles. And if
Speaker 1: you didn't see, because you don't have video of this,
Speaker 1: I was just flapping my arms. Obviously, the bees need
Speaker 1: some kind of guidance system and behavior control, so we're
Speaker 1: talking about environmental sensors and a navigation computer, and of
Speaker 1: course every robot needs a power source. All of this
Speaker 1: on a flying robot it's like the size of a coin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty ambitious project. I'll be very interested to
Speaker 1: see where they go with it. So this is actually
Speaker 1: really cool for the fields of robotics and miniaturization and
Speaker 1: it's even gonna be really interesting for the things we
Speaker 1: learned from trying to perfect algorithms to mimic like the
Speaker 1: emergent behavior of a bee colony, right, because I think
Speaker 1: we're saying earlier it's a it's a very social insect, right,
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking we're probably gonna learn a lot about
Speaker 1: bees just by trying to mimic bees. But also the
Speaker 1: the project's Harvard website mentions that these could be used
Speaker 1: for search and rescue, hazardous environment exploration, military surveillance, high
Speaker 1: resolution weather and climate mapping, and traffic monitoring. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe there's just overshooting, but that's what they claim.
Speaker 1: But no, Hey, you know, i'd say that's really cool.
Speaker 1: But what we hope is that we don't have to
Speaker 1: use something like that for pollination, right, because hopefully these
Speaker 1: new findings out of the Harvard School of Public Health
Speaker 1: well will lead to the discovery of the particular mechanism
Speaker 1: responsible for colony collapse. You're talking about the study from
Speaker 1: this year you mentioned earlier, correct, right, not the Robob's research. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean either either way, but at any rate, a
Speaker 1: lot more research is certainly going on. Um, there's there's
Speaker 1: a project for smart hives. Okay, it's this open source
Speaker 1: bee hive project. It was funded just the spring through
Speaker 1: indie go go, and it offered a few things to
Speaker 1: help small time beekeepers both succeed and connect with each
Speaker 1: other for larger research purposes. So first, it offered hives
Speaker 1: um either either pre fabricated flat pack hives on delivery
Speaker 1: or blueprints for hives that can be plugged into computer
Speaker 1: numerical control systems, which are automated machining tools that will
Speaker 1: create the pieces for you. So it's basically like ikea
Speaker 1: bee hive, right um. And then also in addition to
Speaker 1: that some some open source sensor kits to assess hive
Speaker 1: health and activity and also to connect up to database
Speaker 1: to track larger trends throughout a population. That's really cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's also a group of researchers from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific
Speaker 1: and Industrial Research Organization and they've been taking this a
Speaker 1: step further. They've they've been gluing these tiny r f
Speaker 1: I D sensors two bees. No, I assume you don't
Speaker 1: actually mean gluing. Oh no, I totally mean gluing, like
Speaker 1: like with glue. Oh yeah, they're really small sensors. They're
Speaker 1: like two point five millimeters square, which is about one
Speaker 1: tenth of an inch, and they weigh only five milligrams,
Speaker 1: which is about of a bees total carrying capacity, So
Speaker 1: there's still plenty of room in there for pollen and whatever.
Speaker 1: It's like having a tiny backpack. Okay. And and the
Speaker 1: the idea here is that they'll be able to monitor
Speaker 1: and model be behavior and then watch for abnormalities and
Speaker 1: identify causes and maybe even stop problems with a hive
Speaker 1: before they get so serious and cause a collapse. So
Speaker 1: how they do this? All right? The r f I
Speaker 1: D chips will transmit data to to a logger when
Speaker 1: they come in close to one, and not like a
Speaker 1: guy who's cutting down trees, but but you know a
Speaker 1: data logger okay? Um? And how how how you glue
Speaker 1: a sensor to a bee? I'd imagine first you stop
Speaker 1: feeding the megabee because let's face it, somebody on megabee.
Speaker 1: Nobody's gluing nothing to me. Brother. Oh yeah, no, you
Speaker 1: don't want to hulked out be when you're trying to
Speaker 1: glue something to it. Absolutely not. Um. Well, okay, so
Speaker 1: so first you're gonna put them to sleep temporarily. By
Speaker 1: refrigerating them, you drop their their internal temperature down to
Speaker 1: like like five degrees celsius or forty one degrees fair
Speaker 1: in hight for about five minutes, and it just kind
Speaker 1: of takes a nap. And then and then you shave
Speaker 1: the bees. You have to shave them to save them. Well,
Speaker 1: I apparently, especially young bees are really quite hairy, which
Speaker 1: can cause a problem with the glue. So if somebody
Speaker 1: was going to put duct tape on my face, I
Speaker 1: wanted to shave my beard first. Absolutely, That's exactly it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so you you shave the bees and then you
Speaker 1: use tweezers to glue this tiny little sensor to its back.
Speaker 1: It's it's serious, wonderful research. And they're and they're looking
Speaker 1: to improve upon the process that they already have. Okay,
Speaker 1: they're they're looking to miniature as the sensors um and
Speaker 1: also increase their their capacity so they can track stuff
Speaker 1: like temperature and atmospheric compounds and even generate the energy
Speaker 1: that they need to operate and transmit this data long
Speaker 1: distances rather than just off a you know a little
Speaker 1: kind of fist bump r f I D thing um
Speaker 1: from the energy of the beating wings of the insect.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. I gotta say, gluing things two bees
Speaker 1: to save the bees lives by learning about bees. It's
Speaker 1: a good project. Now I want to know something else, Lauren. Yes.
Speaker 1: Taylor mentioned in his message to us the inspiration for
Speaker 1: this show that bees could actually be used for a
Speaker 1: lot more than just making honey. So so, bees have
Speaker 1: this really strong sense of smell, right, and they can
Speaker 1: be trained to stick out their tongue or Okay, it's
Speaker 1: it's technically their their nectar collecting tube a k a.
Speaker 1: Their proboscis um when they detect an odor that they've
Speaker 1: been trained to associate with a food reward, and that
Speaker 1: odor can be any number of things, like like drugs
Speaker 1: like methampthetamines, are cocaine, or chemical residue left by or
Speaker 1: used in bombs. This is exactly, well, it's not exactly.
Speaker 1: This is similar to the way that you would train
Speaker 1: dogs to sniff out these these common things, except their bees.
Speaker 1: Except their bees. Is it harder to train bees than
Speaker 1: it is to train dogs. It's actually really easy to
Speaker 1: train bees. They are so excited about food that it's
Speaker 1: really quite easy to get them and they and they
Speaker 1: have such a good sense of smell that it's quite
Speaker 1: easy the two. I mean, once you train them for
Speaker 1: one thing, I think I think it's hard to train
Speaker 1: them for something else. Yeah, so Taylor actually sent us
Speaker 1: a video. We mentioned it earlier in the episode. I
Speaker 1: think of this one. Particular companies UH promotional video on
Speaker 1: YouTube for how to use bees to sniff things. And
Speaker 1: they load bees into these cartridges like Ammo cartridges, little
Speaker 1: cassette tape boxes sort of, and they stuff them in
Speaker 1: a thing that looks like a dust buster. Gently, they
Speaker 1: gently stuff, they don't stuff, they place them in the thing.
Speaker 1: These are trained bees that have been trained like the
Speaker 1: Pavlovian reaction, like smelling cocaine means that I'm about to
Speaker 1: get food, So they stick their tongues out hungrily when
Speaker 1: they smell cocaine. And then you can stick this dust
Speaker 1: buster full of trained bees into a bag and say
Speaker 1: like does this have drugs, bombs, or aliens in it?
Speaker 1: Whatever it is you've trained them to sniff that. That's
Speaker 1: what this video proposed. I thought it was really cool.
Speaker 1: It almost seems like a hoax. It's so weird. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think it's real. Now, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure it's real. Um. And the and the way that
Speaker 1: this kind of be dustbuster works is that you use
Speaker 1: digital imaging on the inside, you know, you know, you
Speaker 1: get like a little digital camera right up in all
Speaker 1: the bees faces, um and and then use pattern pattern
Speaker 1: recognition software to tell when they're sticking their proboscus is out. Okay,
Speaker 1: becam be cam probos cam. But and they're not the
Speaker 1: only people who have been working on this, Okay, So
Speaker 1: even if that video is just too good to be true,
Speaker 1: there are other companies that are actually definitely doing this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like DARPA has funded projects into this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: They they funded a project that trained bees to swarm
Speaker 1: around bomb chemicals instead of flowers. Um. In small areas,
Speaker 1: you can just watch them and see where they go.
Speaker 1: But in large areas, they fitted the bees with we
Speaker 1: little radio transmitters so that they could try get from
Speaker 1: a distance. That's that's some metal gear, solid stuff. And
Speaker 1: and right, I mean, you know, you know, bees have
Speaker 1: an equal sense of smell to dogs. Some some people
Speaker 1: claim that they're a little bit better. I have not
Speaker 1: read research confirming that specifically, so I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say one way or another. But you know these are
Speaker 1: maybe less good save for airports. Um, I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to swarm of bees in an airport personally, why not?
Speaker 1: I just think dogs are a little bit more friendly
Speaker 1: in that kind of case. Actually, I do want a
Speaker 1: swarm of bees in an airport, but I don't think
Speaker 1: that everyone would. I don't think that everyone shares my
Speaker 1: deep love of bees. But bees would definitely, for example,
Speaker 1: be better at finding land mines than dogs, because it
Speaker 1: is very sad when a dog steps on a landline.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants any of that, right. Um, And there's there's
Speaker 1: other research still being done. Um, okay, So so a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, we found out that there's a
Speaker 1: compound in the breath of lung cancer patients that dogs
Speaker 1: can identify. We don't know what that compound is. Science
Speaker 1: has not figured out that thing. But but but dogs
Speaker 1: can positively identify lung cancer patients once they have been
Speaker 1: trained on what that breath thing smells like. Bees can
Speaker 1: do the same thing. And a Portuguese designer by the
Speaker 1: name of Susannah Sarees during Dutch Design Week introduced this
Speaker 1: this glass cancer breathalyzer. Um, it's got this breath tube
Speaker 1: that that connects to a small inner chamber which then
Speaker 1: opens out into a larger outer chamber filled with bees.
Speaker 1: So so you you put these bees in the outer
Speaker 1: chamber and they they have been trained to detect whatever
Speaker 1: this chemical bio marker is, and so when they smell it,
Speaker 1: they swarm into that smaller chamber. So you can just
Speaker 1: watch them, and when they swarm, you're like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: really sorry, I have a diagnosis for you. Um, which
Speaker 1: is bizarre and okay, not on the market because it
Speaker 1: was a design concept rather than actual medical device being aated.
Speaker 1: But how cool is that? Well? I like the idea
Speaker 1: of biosensors in general, and it's cool that we can
Speaker 1: use bees in in just this way. I've never even
Speaker 1: thought about bees as biosensors before this. We did a
Speaker 1: podcast one time. I think about microbial bio sensors, but bees,
Speaker 1: I mean bees? Um. I think that shockingly enough. That
Speaker 1: is all we have to say though about bees on
Speaker 1: this particular date. But we really want to give a
Speaker 1: shout out to our listener Taylor for inspiring this episode
Speaker 1: and for sending us a really interesting note. Yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Oh, and we do we do have
Speaker 1: one more thing. Actually, this is really important to to
Speaker 1: our producer, editor Noel Um. Rather than doing a lyric
Speaker 1: at the top of the podcast, Noel really wanted us
Speaker 1: to say that Forward Thinking is the podcast that looks
Speaker 1: at the future and says So that would have happened,
Speaker 1: but we didn't want to scare you first thing at
Speaker 1: the top there, so we decided to put it back here.
Speaker 1: I hope that we have not scared you too terribly now.
Speaker 1: That was Noel's lovely tribute to everybody's favorite be torture
Speaker 1: scene from the two thousand six remake of the film
Speaker 1: The Wickerman starring Nicolas Cage. What a what a wonderful thing. Well,
Speaker 1: if you'd like to get in touch with us, you
Speaker 1: can email us at f W Thinking at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can visit our website f W Thinking dot com,
Speaker 1: where we have links to. Our social media accounts are Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: Google Plus. Our handle is f W Thinking or some
Speaker 1: variation thereof that. That is what it is, precisely, no
Speaker 1: variations involved. And you can also on that website check
Speaker 1: out our podcasts and videos and blog posts and all
Speaker 1: that good stuff. Probably less about bees than we have
Speaker 1: talked about right now, but many other interesting topics, So
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening and we will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. For more on this topic
Speaker 1: and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
Speaker 1: brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,