Can Drone Pollinators Replace Traditional Honeybees?
By: Samantha Surdek
If you have been keeping up with your blog posts, you would be well aware of the growing decline of Apis mellifera, or the honeybee. In 2016, the United States lost forty-four percent of all honeybee colonies. This is a frightening loss for agricultural industries who largely depend on honeybee pollination. As a matter of fact, three-quarters of crop varieties rely on honeybee pollination such as apples and almonds. Recognizing the large-scale effects of a potential, honeybee extinction, Eijiro Mirako and fellow researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology drafted a short-term solution: a pollinating drone.
This revolutionary drone is constructed with two primary components: horse hair pricklers and an ionic gel. Mimicking the fuzzy texture of the honeybee, the pricklers maintain an electric charge to attach the pollen. On the other hand, the ionic liquid gels (IGLs) use their photochromic properties to collect pollen from plants and deliver the pollen to subsequent plants. When used together, both the pricklers and the gel prove to be successful pollinators. However, as stated in his published results, Miyako recognizes that there is room for improvement. Miyako’s team has been working on an autonomous version which would be equipped with GPS, cameras, and artificial intelligence which would help drones locate plants automatically. Yet, Miyako remains realistic about the drone pollinators by highlighting that “practical pollination has not yet been demonstrated with the aerial robots available.”
Although the drone pollinators seem like a growing substitute for traditional honeybee pollination, critics emphasize the impracticality of these manual pollinators. For example, Saul Cunningham, from the Australian National University in Canberra, notes that drone pollinators would need to be used on a large-scale which would be impractical and economically impossible. Furthermore, skeptics like Christina Grozinger, Director of the Center of Pollinator Research at Penn State University, recognize that drones lack the versatile behaviors of the traditional honeybee which help the organism pollinate varying flowers. Therefore, drones can only pollinate “simple” flowers. Out of all the criticisms, one idea is universally acknowledged: honeybees must be preserved at all costs. Rather than funnel money into developing drones, most people agree that preserving the biodiversity of honeybees should take precedence over the development of drone pollinators.
How would you feel if farmers began adopting drone pollination and abandoning traditional honeybees?
Do you believe that drone pollinators could be a practical alternative in the event of a honey bee extinction?
If given the choice, would you rather fund honeybee preservation or developing drones?
Works Cited:
Comments
-Adam Ghanem
- Austin
Norton is a good antivirus that protects the system from online viruses and malware. Norton Antivirus is very easy to use. Users can download, install and activate it by going to URL: Norton.com/setup.
norton.com/setup