Two Kingswood Grade 9 pupils have taken first prize in the Eskom Expo for Young Scientists regional levels, with their innovative project on training honey bees to detect substances like rhino horn.
Two Kingswood Grade 9 pupils have taken first prize in the Eskom Expo for Young Scientists regional levels, with their innovative project on training honey bees to detect substances like rhino horn.
Rhino poaching is a serious problem in South Africa, with current methods of prevention proving ineffective. In March 2012 one rhino was killed and two were left seriously injured at the Kariega Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape.
Jamie-Lee Stone and Louise Poole submitted their project called Saving the Rhino: training the honey bee after working to train bees to detect the smell of kudu horn with a reward system in which the bees were given sugar water every time they were smelled the kudu horn.
"We couldn't get our hands on any rhino horn, understandably, so we used a similar substance like kudu horn for the training," said Louise.
SavingRhinos.org says the reason rhino poaching is so prevalent in South Africa is due to high Chinese demand, making rhino poaching highly lucrative.
Training Bees
"The bees learnt to associate the smell with the sugar water in about 15 minutes. They are easier and cheaper to transport to border posts, where they could be used to detect smuggled substances like rhino horn."
Honey bees have previously been demonstrated as capable of detecting explosives, landmines and unexploded ordnance in unsafe regions. They can be tracked over hundreds of metres using LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and can cover large areas.
The girls won a gold medal for their project and were placed first in the top five, which means they each win a scholarship for a year's study at Rhodes University. They were also awarded the Environmental Award and the Best Project by Females.
They will now need to present their project at the National Science Expo in Pretoria in October. Jamie-Lee said the idea for their project crystallised after a presentation by wildlife veterinarian William Fowlds to the Kingswood pupils about the Kariega rhinos, Thandi and Themba, and Thandi's brave fight to survive the brutal hacking off of her horn by poachers.
They also discussed the use of bees with local bee expert, Dr Garth Cambray. Joining them at the nationals will be other Kingswood pupils who won medals at the Expo – Michaela Walker and Sanel Le Roux, both in Grade 10, who received a silver medal for their project entitled How clean is your work surface?.
Also there will be Shannon Andrew and Megan van Niekerk, both in Grade 9, who received a silver medal for their project: Which side of the face is more expressive?
