Sometime ago, I wrote the following in critique of Jerry Seinfeld’s flick, Bee Movie: “One won’t learn much about honey bees viewing it. Biologically, It leaves a lot to be desired. For starters, the movie features male bees as workers, when in reality that niche is occupied in nature only by females. Male bees (drones) have nothing to do with pollination, so it is fanciful that they don back packs in the movie to fertilize flowers by spreading pollen around. They also have no role in honey production and thus, when a male bee takes the human race to court for stealing bee honey and exploiting bees, the males again inappropriately take center stage. Finally, the portrayal of a male bee in tennis shoes with only four (not six) legs falling in love with a human female strains credulity.
There’s not a lot of research on drones. It’s reserved generally for the queen and workers. But that’s changing rapidly and not in a way one might think. Actual honey bee males are still pretty much being ignored, but a new era is about to dawn in the form of mechanized, robotic drones.
A hand-wringing post from The Salt, National Public Radio (March 3, 2017) tells the following tale: “Near Esparto, in the beautiful Capay Valley region of central California, 1,400 young almond trees flourish in a century-old orchard overlooking the hills. Since November, they’ve stood in perfect rows without a hint of foliage — resting, naked and dormant, for the upcoming growing season. Their branches now swell with bright pastel blooms in preparation for pollination.
“Like most almond growers, Brian Paddock, owner of Capay Hills Orchard, relies on bees to provide this important aspect of crop development. ‘No bees, no almonds. It’s that simple,’ he says.
The post continues: “A world without bees may seem far-fetched, but experts are looking for ways to help plants survive without them. 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. 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.
“The project stems from a serendipitous moment. Miyako had previously experimented with using the specialized gel for electrochemical applications. 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. As soon as he rediscovered the gel, he thought about the pollination crisis and honeybee decline
The project referenced above is but one of a number of initiatives that have cropped up to produce drone robots going back as far as 2013. At that time The Smithsonian magazine stated (March 12, 2013): “Plagued by colony collapse disorder, the honeybees that do much of the world’s pollination work are in decline, and cheap access to many flowering plants that we depend on for food—from almonds to apples to soybeans—could follow them down.
“Ideally, some intrepid scientist will find a fix for CCD, and the bees will be saved. But there could also be a technological solution to the pollination problem. Researchers have recently worked out the basics of a robotic bee which they say could be used to pollinate plants, search through disaster zones, or perform any variety of tasks where a small swarm of cooperative robots might come in handy.
“Instead of spinning motors and gears, we designed the RoboBee with an anatomy that closely mirrors an airborne insect—flapping wings powered by (in this case) artificial muscles. Our muscle system uses separate ‘muscles’ for power and control. Relatively large power actuators oscillate the wing-thorax mechanism to power the wing stroke while smaller control actuators fine-tune wing motions to generate torque for control and maneuvering.
“More than just the mechanics of bee movement, however, the scientists also want to train their little Robobees to behave like a real colony—interacting, communicating, working together for the good of the hive. They suggest that they still have a fair bit of work ahead of them, but they expect to see them in the wild in five to 10 years.”
With this as a background, it’s worth reviewing what “Reverend Billy” wrote for the Huffington Post, August 2014 : “Let’s consider for a moment the Honey Bee and its anticipated replacement, the RoboBee. Let’s pay a visit to the frankenbee’s parents, Monsanto and DARPA. This is but one of several proposals that have been put forth to develop pollinating drones. Perhaps most dramatic concerns budding cooperation between big agriculture and one of those often inscrutable U.S. military defense outfits, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Area (DARPA). “
According to its wikipedia page, DARPA, “Originally known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency, was created in February 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik 1 in 1957. Since its inception, the agency’s mission is ensuring that the United States avoids further technological surprise. By collaborating with academic, industry, and government partners, DARPA formulates and executes research and development projects to expand the frontiers of technology and science, often beyond immediate U.S. military requirements. DARPA-funded projects have provided significant technologies that influenced many non-military fields, such as computer networking and the basis for the modern Internet, and graphical user interfaces in information technology.”
“Reverend Billy” continues, “The RoboBee is a mechanical bee in the design stage at the Micro-Robotics Lab, housed in a well-appointed building at Harvard University. The RoboBee project’s Intelligence Office declares that the robotic inventors are inspired by the bee. The RoboBee project’s website and press releases use the imagery of the golden bees that we remember from our love of the cuddly, buzzy honey-maker.
“The RoboBee’s public relations flacks argue that the military has nothing to do with the RoboBee. However, we have tapes of the lead scientist at the RoboBee’s lab, Dr. Rob Wood, publicly thanking DARPA for early financing of the project. He is a ‘DARPA Young Fellow,’ a million-dollar award given to researchers whose work reflects the ‘values of the Department of Defense.’ The RoboBee proponents have made a tactical to use Harvard University and the National Science Foundation for a veneer of non-drone prestige.
“But there are smoking drones everywhere. Military awards have been pinned to Rob Wood’s chest by the Navy and Air Force. This wunderkind of nano-technology has even received a citation from President Barack Obama, drone warfare’s most famous fan. The RoboBee is a DARPA project and needs to be a part of Harvard’s burgeoning divestment movement.
“The RoboBee project’s top goal is to achieve mechanical pollination. So Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, et al – the Big Ag companies whose agricultural chemicals are driving the honey bee’s die-off, must be very interested in this honey bee drone. How couldn’t they be waiting in the wings? A robot bee would be invaluable as a pesticide-proof pollinator.”
“Reverend Billy” is no fan of this technology it seems, concluding: “The Honey Bee is a lover, a honey-maker, a lyric in erotic songs, an endearment we give each other. The RoboBee, on the other hand, is a drone being financed by the government. This is weaponized nature. The RoboBee is a killer.”
According to the Wyss institute at Harvard University, the RoboBee is extrapolated from the very real Harvard, “Micro Air Vehicles Project,” inspired by the biology of a bee and the insect’s hive behaviors. While the researchers focused on the development of individual autonomous robots, they also plan to study coordinating large numbers of the robots to accomplish tasks faster and more efficiently.
“The robots are created through an incredible micro-engineering process specifically designed for mass production. Each ‘Bee’ is designed with its own electronic nervous system and power source, and able to target tasks with a microscopic Ultra Violet targeting sensor.
“These micro-engineering advances are increasingly similar to the military’s development of miniature drones. Shared knowledge and research in these technologies is resulting in a massive increase of processing power and flight time, as well as the potential for fully autonomous drone swarms.”
According to The March Against Monsanto web site (March 22, 2018), Grocery chains are now looking to get into the drone pollination act. “Seeking to compete with Amazon and other major retailers in the world of food production, Wal-Mart has been moving to strengthen their supply chain. The company, worth $220 billion as of 2017, has plenty of expendable income to do just that, and has reportedly invested in patents on a surprising new technology: robotic, autonomous bees designed to pollinate crops. The patents in question call for the use of ‘unmanned vehicles,’ aka drones, to help with both pollination and crop production. Six patents were applied for in total, with uses ranging from pesticide spraying to plant pollination.”
A recent robot called the “dropcopter” is also gathering adherents. According to Digital Trends (June 8, 20180), “With bee populations continuing to decline, farmers, conservationists, and technologists alike are busy searching for a solution to help carry out pollination. A New York-based company recently lent a high-tech hand to assist a local apple orchard pollinate its 300 acres of tasty crops. The Beak & Skiff Apple Orchard in LaFayette called in startup Dropcopter and its pollen-spreading UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) to perform the world’s first apple orchard pollination by drone.
“Since 2015, we have been pollinating almond orchards with drones,” co-founder and CTO Adam Fine is quoted as saying. “We have a patent-pending device which accurately distributes a measured amount of pollen directly over the tree canopy. The drone flies an autonomous prewritten mission optimizing its speed to deliver the most effective application. We are the first real-world testing of automated aerial pollination in the nation.”
Like so much new technology, however, there’s a downside as noted by “Reverend Billy” referred to elsewhere in this article. Amid all the buzz, could this plan for “robot bees” have a sting in the tail?
The Daily Mail (August 26, 2018) reports, “One scientist has suggested that RoboBees could be taken over by hackers – and turned into killing machines. At the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference in Austin, Texas, Professor Shashi Shekhar, of the University of Minnesota, warned that security was a key concern for the technology.
“He said: ‘Hacking is a security issue so if the bees’ own controls are hacked they can be put to a damaging purpose.’ And recently told the audience about a chilling episode of the Netflix series Black Mirror in which robot bees are put to ‘nefarious purposes’. The storyline involves a rogue hacker who is able to control countless numbers of the drones to attack and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
“Prof Shekhar said: ‘They send the bees to attack. They use killer bees. With bees all you need is a sting and that sting can deliver a chemical.’ The biggest advance in the technology is cameras that can be fitted to other drones. These can then be used to fly over a field and map where all the flowers are to within a few centimetres.
“He concluded: ‘If you made a very detailed map, then offline using these images you could create the location of the plants and the flowers. Today these technologies are mature enough that this could be done daily. Then all of this computing and sensing is offloaded from the bee. You can say to bee number-one, ‘Go to these ten flowers’.”
Prof Shekhar said robotic bees would be in use within five to ten years, adding: “Sometimes a crisis allows you to test new technology. If we did have a bee-related crisis that might prompt more early adoption. It’s possible this is perceived as a food security issue. There is a food security problem being looked at in the US because of climate change.”
Given the above, it’s worth considering recent words of Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, retired professor at the University of Montana, who has famously carved a career out of using technology to help beekeepers manage honey bees. In part DARPA funding assisted him in developing a training protocol for teaching honey bees how to locate landmines, considered the “worst form of pollution on earth.”
“We’re on the brink of a technology revolution in agriculture – from self-driving combines, to Case and its self-driving and follow-the-lead tractors,” he concludes. “Smart phone and tablet apps are popping up for all kinds of agricultural management uses. Drones have gone from costly, large, military surveillance and weapons devices, to common electronic box store sales items with small to medium-sized, cheap to a bit expensive, but yet accessibly priced, drones lining their shelves.
“The automobile was a disruptive technology that displaced horses, buggies, and even buggy whips. Word processors and electronic calculators displaced typewriters, slide rules, and mechanical calculators full of ratchets, cams, and a lever to pull.
“Electric cars, that have been just around the corner for decades (held up by battery technology) are now a reality. The electronics that manage our vehicles from engines and safety technology are spilling over into self-driving vehicles. I like the adaptive cruise control and cross-traffic warnings in my wife’s car, but I’m not likely to try off-roading in Montana in a self-driving Jeep.
“Disruptive Technologies drive paradigm shifts. Much as most of us don’t like continuous change, it is happening. One can either persist in denial or adapt. The bee industry has never been quick to embrace change. Overall, it lags behind other types of agriculture – there’s no yield mapping, self-driving combine, counterpart – yet. If bees and beekeeping are your business, now is not the time for a head-in-the-sand response.”
Originally brought to you courtesy of Bee Culture Magazine (December 2018) leader in experimental electronic beekeeping information, including the award-winning Catch The Buzz
