Honey bees (Apis mellifera) as explosives detectors: exploring proboscis extension reflex conditioned response to trinitrotolulene (TNT)

Journal Article · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2008 · Apidologie

OSTI ID:964982

Taylor-mccabe, Kirsten J ^[1]; Wingo, Robert M ^[1]; Haarmann, Timothy K ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory

We examined honey bee's associative learning response to conditioning with trinitrotolulene (TNT) vapor concentrations generated at three temperatures and their ability to be reconditioned after a 24 h period. We used classical conditioning of the proboscis extension (PER) in honey bees using TNT vapors as the conditioned stimulus and sucrose as the unconditioned stimulus. We conducted fifteen experimental trials with an explosives vapor generator set at 43 C, 25 C and 5 C, producing three concentrations of explosives (1070 ppt, 57 ppt, and 11 ppt). Our objective was to test the honey bee's ability to exhibit a conditioned response to TNT vapors at all three concentrations by comparing the mean percentage of honey bees successfully exhibiting a conditioned response within each temperature group. Furthermore, we conducted eight experimental trials to test the honey bee's ability to retain their ability to exhibit a conditioned response to TNT after 24h period by comparing the mean percentage of honey bees with a conditioned response TNT on the first day compared to the percentage of honey bees with a conditioned response to TNT on the second day. Results indicate that there was no significant difference between the mean percentage of honey bees with a conditioned response to TNT vapors between three temperature groups. There was a significant difference between the percentage of honey bees exhibiting conditioned response on the first day of training compared to the percentage of honey bees exhibiting conditioned response 24 h after training. Our experimental results indicate that honey bees can be trained to exhibit a conditioned response to a range of TNT concentrations via PER However, it appears that the honey bee's ability to retain the conditioned response to TNT vapors after 24h significantly decreases.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 964982
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-08-07100; LA-UR-08-7100
• Journal Information: Apidologie, Journal Name: Apidologie; ISSN APDGB5; ISSN 0044-8435
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

55
BEES
EXPLOSIVES
HONEY
LEARNING
SACCHAROSE
TNT
TRAINING
VAPOR GENERATORS