Honeybees as chemical biosensors in environment

Insect olfaction systems enable them to detect very small amounts of environmental pollutants such as heavy metals, pesticides and secondary metabolites of disease pathogens such as bacteria. This process is called “biomonitoring”, which has attracted the attention of researchers as a result of low cost compared with other methods of monitoring. It has been proven that different animals like honeybees are trained for
the sensitivity of their olfaction system through effective conditioning based on the responsive behavior of the visible smells to detect smuggling drugs, explosives, and even human diseases. Generally, environmental pollutant monitoring may be conducted through the assessment of honeybee specific behavior such as proboscis extension reflex (PER) in response to pollutants and chemical residue monitoring in colony products or honeybee body tissue. This paper pays attention to the ability of honeybees to monitor pollutants and other chemical compounds in the environment