Deep in the woods in Northern Virginia last month, two human bodies were carried to a remote spot among the trees and left to decompose. As nature takes its course, the bodies will exude organic compounds into the air and soil. Flowers growing nearby will absorb traces of the decay, which pollinating bees will carry to hives.
Forensics researchers at George Mason University plan to study the bees, their honey and the hives near the burial site, a new “body farm” in Manassas, Va., about 25 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. Because bees forage within a close range of their hives, the researchers hope to draw up a formula for human decomposition that investigators can use when searching wide expanses of land for the hidden dead.
“Bees are going to be bringing back whatever chemical signals they have encountered in a decomposing human,” said Dr. Brian A. Eckenrode, an associate professor in the forensics program at George Mason’s College of Science. “It could be really helpful for large search areas.”
Or as Mary Ellen O’Toole, the director of George Mason’s forensic science program, put it, the bees “are tiny crime fighters with wings.”
The university’s forensic science program has worked for several years to start the body farm, one of more than half a dozen research sites in the United States designed to replicate an outdoor crime scene where human remains are found. The team at George Mason hopes their studies in the environment of Northern Virginia could someday add to the toolbox of methods that investigators use in their searches.
“Because we are the first body farm on the Atlantic seaboard, it could tell us quite a bit,” said Dr. O’Toole, a former F.B.I. agent and profiler who worked on the Green River Killer case.
Forensic researchers have long studied the science of human decomposition for clues to the secrets of death. Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, used an “electronic nose” outfitted with sensors that ingest malodorous compounds emanating from a decomposing body to help investigators pinpoint how long someone has been dead.
Research at a Texas State University “body ranch” outside San Marcos, Texas, included studying how deer, vulture and insect interactions affect the decomposition process.
The work on the donated bodies at George Mason’s body farm, whose formal name is the Forensic Science Research and Training Laboratory, began on May 28. A van carrying the two bodies backed up to the perimeter of the site, a five-acre patch of woods surrounded by a padlocked chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, near a performing arts center and a construction site.
As faculty, students, law enforcement officials and the Virginia State Anatomical Program stood by, Dr. O’Toole said a few words. The moment was solemn.
“Some may say this is a gruesome science, but it is really a life-giving science,” she said. “By doing all of this, we can save lives by identifying and prosecuting those guilty persons responsible for the premature deaths and murders of loved ones who have been left in outdoor crime scenes or in clandestine graves, some of which have never been found and sadly lost for all time.”
The donor bodies, both of whom were men, were taken from the van in body bags. Four people on each side carried them on stretchers, trudging through dense plant growth. The plot and route were intentionally left uncleared so the site would resemble a crime scene, the rationale being that, in a quest for secrecy, a killer would not be likely to choose a beaten path.
After carrying the bodies across several acres, the team reached a second fenced area. One body was buried in the clay soil. The other, clad in a long shirt, was left above ground.
(Dr. O’Toole and the team described the handover and their work to a New York Times reporter during a visit to the site on June 3. The bodies were not viewed or photographed.)
Surrendered to the woods, their resting place is now baked by sun, soaked by rain and shaded by towering native poplar, holly and hickory trees, clustered so they form a canopy. The bodies will be brushed by fallen leaves, devoured by insects, nibbled by predators.
As they decompose, organic matter will permeate the air and the surrounding foliage. Bees will alight on native goldenrod and coneflowers, planted in a circle around the bodies to entice the insects.
A teaching assistant, Molly Kilcarr, and a forensics professor, Emily Rancourt, visit regularly, recording data on insect activity and collecting hair tufts, fingerprints and nail trimmings to document the unfolding decay.
The team will examine the beehives, placed just outside the locked gates, to see if the honey contains traces of the volatile organic compounds, or V.O.C.s, that are released by decomposing human bodies, Dr. Eckenrode said. By determining which compounds are from humans, and differentiating them from V.O.C.s produced by other animals, the researchers hope their efforts can help investigators narrow the search area.
While such knowledge could help future investigators use bees as sentinels, insects have long been studied for the roles they play as tiny sleuths.
The developmental age of blow flies and their larvae has helped to determine timelines and whether a body has been moved, clues that can guide investigators, according to forensic entomology research in Europe, the United States and other countries. In Britain, entomologists have studied blow fly larvae on decaying corpses, including one zipped inside a suitcase, to determine how long a person has been dead.
Bees have been enlisted in roles outside the science of crime. They have acted as “biomarkers” at airports to monitor air quality, and to detect whether munitions testing at an Army base in Maryland was causing pollution. They have been trained to detect illicit drugs, and to track elephants with a goal of combating poaching.
The research of Dr. Wayne Lord, an associate professor of forensic and biological sciences at the University of Central Oklahoma, included training bees to associate the scent of animal carcasses with a high-quality food source. Investigators could possibly use such bees to “see where they go and track them,” he said, adding that the insects could possibly “put you in the ballpark” of the location of human remains.
With time and more research, Dr. O’Toole said, bees could possibly provide the scientific basis for obtaining search warrants.
Local beekeepers could be enlisted to share access to their hives near an area where investigators are canvassing for clues.
That could have helped investigators in Northern Virginia narrow their search after a man named Donald Brew confessed in 2007 that he had shot a woman in the head in the 1960s and buried her in Prince William Forest Park, about 13 miles southeast of Manassas.
Mr. Brew, a former army sergeant, led a team that included Professor Rancourt, who was working with Prince William County investigators at the time, through the woods in the park for hours, trying to find the burial spot from 40 years before.
But time had eroded his memory and altered the terrain. He could describe only a fallen tree and a trench covered with leaves, according to the investigators’ report. That was all they had to go on.
Even with cadaver-sniffing dogs and ground-penetrating radar, the woman’s remains were not found. Mr. Brew told investigators that she asked to pray before she was shot.
“I just think to myself: If we could have gone out there and found a honey bee hive and figured out a five-mile radius, it would have changed the trajectory of this case,” Professor Rancourt said. “Instead,” she added, “we were out there aimlessly looking.”