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Bumblebees Used For Targeted Pesticide Deliveries (gizmag.com)
Zothecula writes: Chemical pesticides are generally a bad thing for the environment and pollinators like bees that our agriculture relies on. Now a company out of Vancouver, Canada, called Bee Vectoring Technology (BVT) has brought the two together in a system that uses bees to deliver tiny amounts of natural pesticides and beneficial fungi while pollinating crops.
1-up for a shroom!
I predict unintended consequences...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The bumblebees are likely to revolt and demand a minimum wage for making all those deliveries.
Fight for your bitcoins!
What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
...for Belated Human Assistance
Marvels At How Badly She Screwed Everything Up Thus Far
Limited uses due to the limited payload and the fact that they'll largely just touch the flowers, but where that's "good enough" it's an interesting possibility. Rather than dousing whole fields in pesticides and fungal innocculants you only touch the flowers - but you get almost every last flower. That's pretty darned targeted.
Obviously they're going to be using pesticides and fungal species compatible with the bees. Otherwise the plan wouldn't work at all. They probably use a reverse of the technique used to treat honeybees for parasites - a material that they have to brush against when they enter/leave the hive.
"Oh, goodness. Look at my wrist, I have to go." "But what about your clothes?" "I don't love these."
can we really trust bumblebees not to screw it up? try some africanized bees, they get sh!t done.
lose != loose
I don't see how they'll be able to prevent hive contamination with this method.
The worker bees are as likely to track the pesticides back into the comb when they return from foraging as when they go out to the plants.
Over time any contaminants introduced into a hive will build up in the comb wax, provided that it's a hive structure in which comb is reused. (Refer to Langstroth hives with frames mounted in supers, which are the most common types in the industry).
Even if it's initially harmless at the dosed value, the presence over time will tilt the effective dosages.
This is found in the treatment of varroa mites, which are treated with fumigants that are hung inside the super between the frames. Over time those fumigants that accumulate in the wax add on to the active dosage that should only affect the mites and not the bees, and you end up at the point where a mite treatment is killing the bees too.
I also wonder if they intend for this to be strictly for "workhorse" colonies or for those used in honey for consumption. The pesticides of note might be harmless to humans, but could still be taken poorly by consumers.
Side note: It's not uncommon for various treatments to be used on hives outside of honey production season. But this one would need to be done during the time that bees are actively collecting nectar and pollen for their business to work.
Pesticide & fongus honey, 100% natural!
"Bumblebees Used For Targeted Pesticide Deliveries" vs. "in a system that uses bees to deliver".
Also, this technique is beekeeping 101. Mine have dusted strawberries against fungi for years.
It would be nice, if the summary wouldn't instantly poison my attitude againsta TFA. (and ob. No. I didn't read TFA).
so the x-files project with bees maybe was not all that fictional?