a secret life of bees

"There will undoubtedly be a place for bees in future wars. For the past decade, the American military has been testing their potential as special agents in the wars on drugs and terrorism. Bees are as sensitive to odor as dogs and can be trained to buzz in on drugs, explosives, land mines, and chemical weapons. It takes less than two hours to condition a hive of bees to reject flowers and, rewarded by sugar, seek contraband scent instead. Bees successfully locate explosive chemicals more than 99 percent of the time. They are more accurate than dogs, cheaper to train, feed and maintain..." -Holley Bishop, Robbing The Bees - A Biography of Honey, The Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced The World (2005), p. 160