Bees can be trained to detect a plant disease, researchers report

A team trained 40 honeybees to associate the scent of blight with sugar water. Afterwards, the bees correctly extended their tongues to the smell of infected leaves in 91 percent of trials.

The method is far from a farm tool. The authors say the bees only worked in a lab, with trained handlers.

Sources

• Olfactory conditioning of honeybees to plant volatiles (demo) (Demo Journal of Biology, 2026-08-30)

This is a demo story: every name, place, organisation and figure in it is fictional.