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Printer FriendlyReprinted with permission from Popular
Science, August 1999.
© Copyright, Times Mirror Magazines, Inc.
Worker Bees
MINIATURE radio frequency, or RF, tags have been used to identify everything from compact discs to tollbooth vehicle passes. Now they're also being used to track the comings and goings of domesticated honeybees, in the hope that bees will lead researchers to buried land minds.
Entomologists at the University of Montana are gluing the tiny tags, about half the size and weight of rice grains, to bees' backs. Each tag contains a 10-character code that identifies an individual bee. When the bee enters or exits the hive, it passes through an electronic tag reader that records its passage.
"Bees are flying dust mops," says Ron Gilbert of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where research scientists developed the bee tags and hive-mounted reader with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. If there are land mines in the area where bees are foraging, the bees' bodies pick up trace amounts of TNT released by the mines. The TNT can then be "sniffed" by a mass spectrometer, activated whenever a tagged bee passes through the reader. If TNT is detected, that means the area surrounding the hive should be searched carefully for mines.
Similar RF tags may someday be used to identify military gear such as M-16 rifles and night vision goggles. Currently, soldiers must conduct frequent inventories of this equipment to make sure nothing has been stolen. Radio frequency tags could make it easier to keep track of the expensive gear, or even disable it if it leaves a building without authorization.-D.S.
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