As pollinators, bees are hard to beat. Still, that hasn’t prevented researchers from working on a high-tech alternative: drones that blow soap bubbles to transport pollen to a flower.
It’s a “really cool” approach, says Henry Williams, a roboticist at the University of Auckland, who was not involved in the work. But some biologists are skeptical that drones will ever be an effective replacement for bees.
In a pear orchard, the researchers used a toy bubble gun to blow pollen-laden bubbles on flowers in three trees. After 16 days, the resulting fruit was just as good as that of flowers that had been pollinated by hand, they report today in iScience. The farmers in this orchard, and elsewhere in Japan, traditionally pollinate their pear and apple trees by hand with a feather brush. Miyako says that’s because bees don’t pollinate in low temperatures, and because they sometimes damage the flowers in a way that results in malformed fruits.
One advantage of using bubbles rather than feather brushes is that the bubbles require a lot less pollen. A feather brush, the researchers found, applies about 1800 milligrams of pollen to each flower, whereas the bubbles needed only 0.06 milligrams. That means farmers would have to gather far less pollen before manually pollinating their flowers, if they’re adding it to a soap solution.
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I've written here on MattChat numerous times about how bees are in real trouble. And if bees are in trouble, humans are in trouble.
An effective pollination solution must be found.
Will it be bubbles?
Grace & Peace & Love to you all -
Matt