عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

German Police Consider Using Bees in Drug Detection

An apiarist collects honey from a beehive in Madalpur village, Uttar Pradesh. (Photo: REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma)
An apiarist collects honey from a beehive in Madalpur village, Uttar Pradesh. (Photo: REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma)
TT
TT

German Police Consider Using Bees in Drug Detection

An apiarist collects honey from a beehive in Madalpur village, Uttar Pradesh. (Photo: REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma)
An apiarist collects honey from a beehive in Madalpur village, Uttar Pradesh. (Photo: REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma)

German Police are currently considering an unfamiliar proposal: the use of bees in drug detection, just like dogs. The idea has made headlines in the police magazine. Officer Sonja Kessler, 22, who keeps hives as a hobby, revealed her idea in her graduation project entitled "drug detection bees… a revolution in the police mission."

In her paper, Kessler said dogs deployed for drug detection work for a short term, focus on specific people, and require a time consuming and expensive training. So, why don't we use bees instead of dogs?

According to the German News Agency, the European Police Congress honored Kessler for her research this year.

Drug detection bees: unfamiliar research or crazy idea?

According to experts, bees have a great sense of smell and can be trained to recognize and report odors.

For this purpose, the little insects should be kept in a container, a tube for instance, according to Peter Rosenkranz, head of the Baden-Württemberg State Institute for Bee Science at the University of Hohenheim. During the training, the bees smell certain material, and at the same time, lick a sugar solution. By repeating the process several times, the bees master the targeted smell.

The moment those little insects sniff the smell, they point their stingers through which they absorb the nectar, because they expect a sweet treat.

Rosenkranz stresses that bees have an accurate smelling sense that can be as effective as dogs.

Rosenkranz said that during an educational course, he trained bees on recognizing different cigarettes brands.

"Only 20 bees can be used, and put in a briefcase-like container, to detect drugs in train stations or an airport checkpoint. The idea had been practically tested," he noted.

For her part, Kessler believes that a bee can do more than that.

"The reward approach can be used to build and rehabilitate full beehives," she said in the article published in the police magazine.

The "bee detectors" that fly freely can monitor wide spaces expanding over up to 50 km square. The little insects can also be covered with a fluorescent powder so they can be recognized by drones. Bees can be deployed to uncover drug farms and to detect explosives found in the world wars ammunition remnants.

Yet, the young bee lover admits that the bee's free movement depends on weather conditions and the right season. A legal frame that regulates the work of those trained bees is also needed to determine the legal consequence if a bee stings a suspect while sniffing him, for example, or whether it can be used as admissible evidence in court.

In spite of these limits, Kessler sees that bees can be an efficient assistant, and hopes police can benefit from these little insects in their work.

The German Police Syndicate didn't reject the idea.

"We shouldn't laugh about the proposal. We are actually considering it," said a police member who works as an editor in the police magazine and spokesperson to the syndicate.

The spokesperson said the syndicate received many positive responses about this idea, noting that bees can be deployed to serve the federal police, along with dogs trained on drug control.

Commenting on the police syndicate's statements, officials in the Federal Police said: "Generally, the federal police do not comment on the syndicate's statements, since the police are not directly related to such issues. But, officials are advised to consult customs to see if bees could be used to help check the contents of the bags."

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

Rats Feast on New York’s City’s Bagged Garbage. Can Putting It in Bins End the Smorgasbord?

A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
TT
TT

Rats Feast on New York’s City’s Bagged Garbage. Can Putting It in Bins End the Smorgasbord?

A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)

For half a century, New York City residents have taken out their trash by flinging plastic bags stuffed with stinking garbage straight onto the sidewalk.

When the bags inevitably leak or break open, they spill litter into the street, providing smorgasbords for rats. In the winter, the trash mounds get buried in snow and remain frozen in place for days, sometimes weeks, reinforcing the city’s reputation as filthy.

Now, New Yorkers are slowly adjusting to a radically new routine, at least for America's biggest city: Putting their trash in bins. With lids.

Earlier this month, covered bins became a requirement for all residential buildings with fewer than 10 living units. That’s the majority of residential properties. All city businesses had to start using bins earlier this year.

“I know this must sound absurd to anyone listening to this who lives pretty much in any other city in the world,” said Jessica Tisch, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, who oversaw the new measures before becoming the city's new police commissioner this week. “But it is revolutionary by New York City’s standards because, for 50 years, we have placed all our trash directly on the curbs.”

Residents who've already experienced trash containerization elsewhere agree it's long overdue for New York City to catch up.

“You see plastic bags open with the food just rotting and stinking and then it leaking out over the sidewalk and into the road,” said John Midgley, who owns a brownstone in Brooklyn and has lived in London, Paris and Amsterdam. “Just the stink of it builds up, you know, week after week after week.”

New York City's homes, businesses and institutions put about 44 million pounds (20 million kilograms) of waste out on the curb every day, about 24 million pounds (11 million kilograms) of which is collected by the city's sanitation department. Much of the rest is handled by private garbage carters.

In the early 20th century, New York City required trash to be placed in metal cans. But in the era before widespread plastic bag use, refuse was thrown directly into the bins, making them filthy and grimy.

Then in 1968, the city’s sanitation workers went on strike. For more than a week, trash cans overflowed. Garbage mounds piled high on sidewalks and spilled into the streets like some dystopian nightmare.

Plastic bag makers donated thousands of bags to help clean up the mess, and New Yorkers never looked back, said Steven Cohen, a Columbia University dean specializing in public affairs.

“It had to do with convenience,” he said. “After the strike, the sanitation workers preferred the modern advance of lighter and seemingly cleaner sealed plastic bags.”

Plastic kept more odors in, compared to the old metal bins. A worker could grab the neck of a bag and easily fling it into a truck.

But Democratic Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has deemed trash bag mounds Public Enemy No. 1 in his well-documented war against the city's notorious rats.

Rats have little problem getting into a plastic bag. Durable bins with closing, locking lids should, in theory, do a better job of keeping them out.

The bin requirement, which took effect Nov. 12, comes with its own challenges. Among them: Finding a place for large, wheeled bins in neighborhoods where most buildings don't have yards, alleys or garages. Landlords and homeowners also have to collect the empty bins and bring them back from the curb in the morning — something you didn't have to do with plastic bags.

Caitlin Leffel, who lives in Manhattan, said residents of her building had to hire someone “at surprisingly high cost” to bring out the bins the night before and bring them back in three times a week.

“I know there are problems with the way this city has collected trash for years,” she said. “But the way this program has been rolled out, it has not taken into account many of the nuances of living in New York City.”

Building superintendents are also grumbling about the added work of bringing bins back from the curb.

“It’s completely rearranged our lives,” says Dominick Romeo, founder of NYC Building Supers, a group of building managers that recently rallied in front of City Hall against the new requirements. “Folks are running around like crazy.”

Eventually, the largest residential buildings — those with more than 31 units — will have their own designated container on the street. New trash trucks built with automated, side-loading arms — another innovation that is already common in many other countries — will then clear them out.

The upgrades should make pickups easier and cleaner, even if it might take longer for trash collectors to make the rounds, says Harry Nespoli, president of the union representing some 7,000 city sanitation workers.

For now, he says, workers are still tossing trash into their trucks manually, which has its own downsides.

“Some places, they’re not even using bags. They're just putting their trash into the bins,” Nespoli said. “It's going to take time to get everyone to do it the right way, but at the end of the day, it's our job to pick it up.”

Tisch believes New Yorkers will eventually come around to the new reality.

City officials, for now, are issuing written warnings for non-compliance. Not everyone knows about the new rules yet. But come Jan. 2, fines ranging from $50 to $200 will kick in.

“No one wants to live on a dirty block,” Tisch said. “No one wants to walk past a heaping mound of trash and trash juice when they are leaving to go to work or they are walking their kids home from school.”