Declining Bee Populations Ignite Swarm of Tech Innovation to Save Global Ag
By Stephanie Metzinger C ruising through California’s San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys in late February, you will see orchards lined with almond tree buds that have burst into lush pink and white blooms in preparation for pollination. Honey bees buzz from tree to tree foraging for nectar, while pollinating the sea of almond blossoms along the way. Come September, almonds are vigorously shaken off of the trees by farm machines that, coincidentally, are colored like the black and yellow of bees. In 2018 alone, California produced 2.45 billion pounds of almonds. This is a 7.9 percent increase from the previous year’s crop, a testament to farmers who fiercely battled the freezing weather during almond bloom and carefully managed their crop to harvest. However, there is one hero in the story that may have been overlooked: bees. Approximately 1.6 million colonies of honey bees are placed in California’s almond orchards at the beginning of the bloom period to pollinate the crop. Beyond almonds, close to 100 crops also rely to some degree on bee pollination services. In fact, one in every three bites a person eats is from a bee-pollinated nut or flower. DECIMATION OF BEE COLONIES CONTINUE Unfortunately, our overlooked heroes are facing a dilemma. They are dying.
Since the late 1990s, beekeepers around the world have observed the mysterious and sudden disappearance of bees, and noted unusually high rates of decline in honeybee colonies. It got even worse in 2006 when commercial beekeepers watched as the rates of dead bees almost tripled due to a condition called colony collapse disorder. “When beekeepers brought large numbers of colonies to California for almonds, the bees looked good, the mite levels were under control but yet they lost the colonies. They would go back weeks later and they would find the queen and a double handful of bees,” said Dr. Steve Sheppard of Washington State University, during a WG Lunch & Learn webinar about colony collapse disorder. For much of the past 10 years, beekeepers, primarily in the United States and Europe, have been reporting annual hive losses of 30 percent or higher—a figure that is substantially more than what is considered normal or sustainable. The decline of colony numbers over time has been attributed to several challenges. This includes habitat fragmentation, parasites, limited genetic diversity, viruses, migratory stresses, bacteria, lack of forage diversity and quantity, poor bee nutrition, exposure to pesticides and climate change. THE RISE OF ROBOT BEES… KIND OF A world without bees may still seem far-fetched, but the
continuous and steady decline of these pollinators is compelling researchers, technologists and farmers to come up with a solution sooner rather than later. Researchers across the world are taking matters into their own hands and inventing robotic pollinators. For example, Eijiro Miyako, a researcher at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, has designed an insect-sized drone capable of artificial pollination. This prototype is coated with a patch of horse hair bristles and an ionic liquid gel so it can collect and transfer pollen from one plant to another.
ApisMonitor installation in County Cork in Ireland. Photo Credit Jonathan Fleury
12 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com MARCH | APRIL 2019
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