Honey Bees Trained to Detect Cancer in Patients Within 10 Minutes

With the help of honey bees, patients will be able to detect cancer in its early stages. Therefore, they will be able to treat it sooner. We know that honey bees

have extraordinary good and sensitive sense of smell. They do not have a nose, but their antennae, feet, and tongue have olfactory glands. It is because of this ultra-sensitive sense of smell, why bees can detect these odors, that a human’s nose cannot.

“Inscentinel”, a UK-based firm specialized in insect research, suggests that honey bees can be trained to detect some early-stage cancers in people. Portuguese scientist Susana Soares, using this breakthrough, developed glass device for diagnosis using the patient’s breath and honey bees. Bio-markers associated with tuberculosis, lung cancer, skin cancer and diabetes, which can all be detected through smell, are present on a patient’s breath.

“The glass objects have two enclosures: a smaller chamber that serves as the diagnostic space and a bigger chamber where previously trained bees are kept for the short period of time

necessary for them to detect general health,” Soares wrote on her website. “People exhale into the smaller chamber, and the bees rush into it if they detect on the breath the odor that they were trained to target.”

These honey bees are trained to detect cancer by exposing the insects to the smell and then feeding

them sugar. This will teach the cancer-detecting bees to connect the odor, with a reward.  Soares says that she could train bees within 10 minutes. These bees will be able to detect even tuberculosis and diabetes.

Soares says that her diagnostic device is accurate, sustainable and inexpensive. She adds that bees and wasps are already used to detect land mines and illegal drugs.

Richard Pollack, an entomologist who is chief scientific officer of IdentifyUs in Boston, says: “This device really needs to go through more independent studies before going public. We need to know how sensitive it is, how specific it is and how many false positives would occur. There’s a heck of a lot more testing to be done.”.