![]() "Every flower needs to be pollinated to set the nut. "There are 1 million acres of almond trees in California," says Marla Spivak, a MacArthur Fellow and entomologist at the University of Minnesota. Tackling thousands of trees takes major manpower and a hefty budget.īut even if cost were no object, an army of pollinating robot bees would face myriad obstacles. When done by hand, using a brush to apply the pollen, a person can pollinate five to 10 trees a day, depending on the size of the trees. Using fluorescent microscopy, the team observed pollen glowing in test tubes – offering strong proof that fertilization was successful.Īlthough artificial pollination is already possible, it's a tedious, time-consuming process. He and his colleagues found that the gel alone was not enough to hold the pollen, so they added horse hair to mimic the fuzzy exterior of bees and provide an electric charge to keep the grains attached. He settled on a bee-sized, four-propeller drone, commercially available for around $100 each. With the live-model tests deemed a success, Miyako turned his attention to drones. Those with the sticky residue collected pollen from the flowers.Īnother experiment, involving houseflies ( Musca domestica), showed that the gel had a camouflage effect, changing color with different sources of light, which could help the pollinators avoid predators. One subset of the insects had the gel applied to their backs, while the others remained untouched. In one experiment, he placed ants in a box of tulips. Miyako performed additional tests on living samples. And when a drop landed on the floor and attached to an ordinary piece of dust, he was sold. The team first tested the biocompatibility and eco-friendliness of the gel against ants (which are also pollinators) and cells from mice, and found that it had no harmful effects after three days. ![]() ![]() The insect-sized drones use horse hairs coated with ionic liquid gel to mimic the fuzzy exterior of bees and provide an electric charge to keep the grains attached. ![]() But his ionic liquid gel, by contrast, is a substance with a long-lasting "lift-and-stick-again" adhesive quality – ideal for moving pollen from one plant to the next. As soon as he rediscovered the gel, he thought about the pollination crisis and honeybee decline.Ĭonventional gels, Miyako explains, are mainly made of water and lose their stickiness over time. When the gel performed poorly, he tucked the bottles away in a drawer and forgot about them - until he moved out of his lab two years ago. Miyako had previously experimented with using the specialized gel for electrochemical applications. The project stems from a serendipitous moment. Coated with a patch of horse hair bristles and an ionic liquid gel, these pint-sized robots can collect and transfer pollen from one plant to another. Eijiro Miyako, a researcher at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, has designed what he believes could one day be a partial solution: an insect-sized drone capable of artificial pollination. Other species of bees have neared mass extinction, including the rusty patch bumble bee and seven species of Hawaiian yellow-faced bees.Ī world without bees may seem far-fetched, but experts are looking for ways to help plants survive without them. lost 44 percent of all honeybee colonies - a species essential to commercial pollination in this country. Bee deaths have been on the rise, with losses outpacing colonies' ability to regenerate.
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