Scientists in the Netherlands are training bees to detect COVID-19

Scientists know that bees are very intelligent and very intuitive. They also have an unusually keen sense of smell.
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Right now in the Netherlands, they're putting that power to the test by training bees as live COVID-19 testers.

Scientists at Wageningen University harnessed the bees and used a sugary reward to get real-time COVID testing results.

"We present coronavirus positive and coronavirus negative samples," says Wim Van Der Pol, a professor at Wageningen University. "After presenting a positive sample, we always present sugar water afterwards. So in the end, the bees extend their proboscis after being presented a coronavirus positive sample and in that way we can train bees pretty quickly."


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Scientists say it can take hours or days to get a COVID-19 test result, but the response from the bees is immediate.

While they don't see this technique replacing more conventional forms of COVID-19 testing, it could be useful for countries where tests are scarce.



They're still working to determine the true effectiveness, and of course say they'd rather see bees being bees.