Humanitarian demining is a worldwide effort and the range of climates and environments prevent any one detection method being suitable for all sites, so more tools are required for safe and efficient explosives sensing. Landmines emit a chemical flux over time, and honeybees can collect the trace residues of explosives (as particles or as vapour) on their body hairs. This capability was exploited using a passive method allowing the honeybees to freely forage in a mined area, where trace explosives present in the environment stuck to the honeybee body, which were subsequently transferred onto an adsorbent material for analysis by a fluorescent polymer sensor. Potential false positive sources were investigated, namely common bee pheromones, the anti-varroa pesticide Amitraz, and the environment around a clean apiary, and no significant response was found to any from the sensor. The mined site gave a substantial response in the optical sensor films, with quenching efficiencies of up to 38%. A model was adapted to estimate the mass of explosives returned to the colony, which may be useful for estimating the number of mines in a given area.

人道主义排雷是世界范围内的努力，气候和环境的范围使任何一种探测方法均不适用于所有地点，因此需要更多工具来安全有效地爆炸物感测。地雷会随着时间的流逝释放化学通量，蜜蜂可以在体毛上收集爆炸性残留物（作为微粒或蒸气）。使用被动方法来开发此功能，该方法可让蜜蜂在雷区自由觅食，那里的环境中存在痕量炸药，其附着在蜜蜂身上，然后将其转移到吸附剂材料上，以通过荧光聚合物传感器进行分析。调查了潜在的假阳性来源，即常见的蜂信息素，抗varroa杀虫剂Amitraz以及清洁蜂房周围的环境，并没有发现传感器有明显反应。采光部位在光学传感器薄膜中产生了显着响应，淬灭效率高达38％。调整模型以估计返回殖民地的炸药质量，这对于估计给定区域的地雷数量可能有用。