Posted on 02/09/2017 2:21:55 PM PST by BenLurkin
Scientists in Japan say they’ve managed to turn an unassuming drone into a remote-controlled pollinator by attaching horsehairs coated with a special, sticky gel to its underbelly.
The system, described in the journal Chem, is nowhere near ready to be sent to agricultural fields, but it could help pave the way to developing automated pollination techniques at a time when bee colonies are suffering precipitous declines.
...
Scientists have thought about using drones, but scientists haven’t figured out how to make free-flying robot insects that can rely on their own power source without being attached to a wire.
“It’s very tough work,” said senior author Eijiro Miyako, a chemist at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan.
There’s a lot of work to be done before that’s a reality, however. Small drones will need to become more maneuverable and energy efficient, as well as smarter, he said — with better GPS and artificial intelligence, programmed to travel in highly effective search-and-pollinate patterns.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
“Probably due to products like round-up and GMO’s. Thanks Monsanto!”
Monsanto is one of a dozen companies which produce glyphosate (roundup) in one form or another worldwide.
The topic of bee deaths due to this chemical is hotly debated, however, there is no study which makes that conclusion. Most of the blather is circumstantial. Actual bee deaths like the one in Oregon people go on about was not caused by glyphosate, but by another product sprayed on blooming trees. The label said not to spray blooming trees, but the operator ignored the label - that is a criminal offense, punishments vary by state.
Hopefully. But until we know for sure, maybe it’s best for humans not to be spraying countless manmade chemicals into the biosphere. Scientists can study individual chemicals and deem them “safe”. But who knows what all the various mixes, their decay products and countlessly varying mixtures of decay products do in the very long term.
I’m for most science and technology but think humans are too imperfect to be irreversibly changing nature. We mess up all the time and someday there will be no undo button if we change too much
Don’t know where you are, but I didn’t see one honey bee here in MI this last year.
They were down the year before but seemed to be enough wild, native bee around to pick up the slack but this past even the wild ones were down.
I live in the woods a ways away from farms so not sure what’s going on.
This winter, also, the birds coming t feeders around here are way down also.
Honey bees, they swarm open cans of coke or ones thrown away
The bees have simply adapted to human civilization, and have found it easier to scavenge from human trash mostly discarded soft drinks for sugar than to hunt out pollen.
I haven’t seen the buggers in the trash either. It must have been at least 10-15 years ago I last remember taking out trash or having BBQs and we couldn’t get rid of them. Now I can’t even remember the last time I saw ONE
There is a water park in my town and the honey bees swarm all the picnic tables trying to get to peoples cans of soda the entire summer. The second you set your drink down they swarm it and they swarm all the cans thrown in the open top trashcans too.
This happens every summer for the entire summer here in central Texas. Only flies did that when I was a kid.
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