Video: Studying the behaviour of bumblebees has enabled biologists to refine methods used to track down serial killers

You might not think it, but bumblebees and serial killers have something in common: neither like to divulge their address and both tend to stay close to home. Now a study of the habits of one could be used to track down the other.

Geographical profiling (GP) is a technique used by the police to find serial offenders. The search is narrowed down using two common traits: most attacks happen fairly close to the perpetrator’s home, but beyond a “buffer zone” that prevents the attacker being recognised or noticed by neighbours.

By mapping out the locations of crime scenes, police aim to identify the buffer zone and prioritise their search in this area.


Bumblebees also leave a buffer zone around their nest to prevent predators finding it, so Nigel Raine, from Queen Mary, University of London, UK, and his colleagues wondered if they could be used to test the effectiveness of the GP model.

“For obvious ethical reasons, you can’t carry out controlled tests of the GP model on serial killers, but we can test it on bumblebees,” Raine says.

The biologists set up a colony of bumblebees and allowed them to forage in a “meadow” of fake flowers containing artificial nectar.

Gotcha!

The bees were tagged and then monitored as they travelled between their nest and the flowers. Altering the density of the flowers enabled the scientists to manipulate how hard the bees had to work to gather the nectar.

By combining computer simulations of the bees’ movements with geographical profiling, the team found they were able to locate the entrance to the bees’ nest, showing that the police technique was effective.

The researchers say they have also found ways to improve the profiling technique. They have observed different types of foraging behaviour among the bees that could be used to refine the algorithms used by the police, helping to make the technique more accurate.

David Hill from the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, says the system could help track down more agreeable creatures too. He thinks it could be used to locate and protect the homes of species such as bats, although “woodland species with multiple, shifting roosts could present much more of a challenge”.

Journal reference: Journal of the Royal Society Interface (DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2008.0242)