Every 30 minutes, of every day, someone in the world steps on a landmine by accident and either loses life, or suffers horrific injuries. Over 90% of the victims are innocent civilians. One third, are children.

A landmine is an explosive device that is placed on or in the ground to explode when triggered by a vehicle, person or animal. Landmines are used in wartime to secure disputed borders or restrict enemy movement.

All wars eventually end and the armies move out. But the landmines stay where they were planted. With time, everybody, including those who buried it, forget their location and even their presence. But the mines continue to be functional for many decades and come alive when some unsuspecting civilian walks over it. The Red Cross estimates that 80-120 million landmines are lying around, worldwide. In many developing countries, thousands of acres of land lie unused because farmers are afraid to work in their fields

There is a growing worldwide effort to rid the Earth of landmines. But that is not easy because to remove the explosives, the mines must first be located. Many detection methods have been tried, including the use of high-tech gadgets. But the most common technique is the use of dogs who locate buried land mines through smell. But, the dogs need to be accompanied by men. And there is always the fear that their combined weights could trigger an explosion.

The good news now from the US is that huge battalions of airborne 'sniff-specialists' are getting ready to join the mine detection squads. Researchers from several U.S. universities are training honey bees to locate buried landmines.

In areas where landmines are known to exist, the researchers have set up bee colonies.

As bees forage for nectar and pollen, they attract particles of dust, soil, and pollen to their fuzzy, statically charged bodies and bring samples back to the hive. Since all landmines leak small amounts of explosives into nearby soil or water, the materials collected by the bees and brought to the hive are analyzed. The results indicate the density of mines and kind of explosive deployed.

To know the exact locations, some groups of bees are trained to seek out the smell of TNT. First the researchers get the bees to associate the smell of an explosive with a food source. This is done by putting some sugar water in a feeder and some crystals of the explosive chemicals, around it. As the bees feed on that sugar water, they also smell the explosive and begin to associate the explosives smell with a food source. Thus when they go out into a field, attracted by that smell, they congregate around a mine, looking for food.

Small diodes attached to the backs of several hundred TNT-trained bees, helps the researchers map the landmine location by using a handheld radar tracking device.

Scientists are excited about the new recruits because under test conditions the bees have been right, 98% of the times!

Kamala Balachandran