A shortage of honey bees has developed in recent years. Scientists fear this will eventually affect harvests in many countries. An American student has developed a bee drone that could potentially address this problem.
Robotic bee
There are dozens of fruits and vegetables, including apples, berries, melons and broccoli, that could not grow without the work of bees (pollinating crops). But there has been bee mortality in recent years and few new bees are arriving. Student Anna Haldewang from the Savannah College of Art and Design in US Georgia thinks she has found a solution to that. She developed the bee-drone Plan Bee.
This is a robotic bee (controlled by a smart device) designed to mimic the pollination of bees. Similar to how bees transport pollen from one flower to another, the drone sucks pollen from a plant and scatters it over other flowers, creating cross-pollination.
Self-sufficient
The student first came up with the idea during a product design class, where she was tasked with developing a self-sustaining object that encourages plant growth. You need sun, water, soil and cross-pollination to make that happen, Haldewang noted.
Pollination made her think of bees and in her preliminary research she found out that bees do not have it easy. "I had no idea of the dangers honey bee colonies face. Bees are disappearing." By completing the class assignment, she wanted to draw attention to this.
She developed the Plan Bee prototye, a hand-sized black and yellow device that initially looked nothing like a bee. She wanted to give it the essence of the bee without imitating the insect exactly.
Holes
She made about 50 design variations before arriving at the final design. The drone consists of a foam core (to keep the weight down), a plastic hull and a pair of small propellers to keep the bee in the air. Each of the bee's six parts have small holes at the bottom through which pollen can be sucked up. These are then stored in a cavity in the hull before cross-pollination takes place. If you turn it upside down, it looks like a flower; a deliberate ode to flowers.
Plan Bee is still in its first phase; Haldewang is currently fine-tuning the engineering. However, she has already filed a patent application and hopes to bring the product to market in two years. "I would love to see people use the Plan Bee in their backyards and even create customised gardens with it. Real bees are so small that you can't see how they pollinate flowers. With the drone, you can see how this process works."
By: Kelly Bakker
Source: Plan Bee
