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Honey bees used to sniff out disease.

Researchers in New Zealand have found a way to train bees to sniff out tuberculosis.

People infected with the disease have sweet floral smelling breath, which although humans are unable to detect, the bees can. “When we tested them with the tuberculosis odours we found the bees can still smell it down to parts per billion,” says one researcher.

The bees stick out their tongues when they identify tuberculosis, and are rewarded with a sweet treat when they correctly identify it.

“I think the key in resource poor settings is getting something that costs cents rather than tens of dollars - in some places the whole budget for health per person might just be a few dollars a year,” says infectious diseases specialist Dr Steve Chambers.

Dr Chambers believes the bees could feature inside a cheap, rapid and non-invasive home screening test which could indicate whether a person needs medical attention. “The key thing is can you identify people who have it and are infecting other people, you identify them early, cheaply, easily and quickly and move them onto treatment programmes that could make a dent in how it’s transmitted around the world,” he says.