By: Reagan Smith
Bumblebees are crucial contributors in the world of pollinating and fertilizing plants. However, alarmingly, their numbers are dropping; in fact, nowadays, you have a 50% less chance of seeing a bee anywhere when compared to 1974. Let’s take a look at why this is happening.
Peter Soroye, the lead scientist on this issue, has coined the term “climate chaos” to describe what is happening. According to him, due to climate change, many bees are being forced to tolerate newer, higher, temperatures their bodies aren’t adapted to, forcing them to either relocate or die. The reason bees can’t handle higher temperatures is that their fuzzy bodies generate heat while flying, meaning that they can overheat easily in higher temperatures. Furthermore, these higher temperatures can also negatively impact plants and other vegetation that bees rely on to survive.
So, since bees pollinate plants that animals and humans rely on for habitats and/or food, their disappearance could cause a cascading effect throughout the environment. In addition, there is a potential economical impact to consider due to the fact that bees contribute over $15 billion to the U.S. economy every year from the crops they pollinate.
Due to the disasters that the world would face if bees were to disappear from earth, some scientists have been working throughout the past few decades in order to determine a way to continue pollination without bees. One such solution involves artificial pollination. However, current artificial pollination involves heavy labor; furthermore, the results fail to justify the enormous undertaking. In order to artificially pollinate their vegetation, farmers must use a cotton swab/brush to apply pollen grains to each individual crop/flower by hand, which is both costly and time consuming. And while large machines can quickly disperse pollen grains through the usage of pollen blowers, dusters, or spray dispensers, they tend to waste the pollen, which is an issue due to the fact that the price of pollen is rapidly increasing.
In 2017, Eijiro Miyako, a leading researcher in the world of artificial pollination, developed a small drone lined with horsehair coated in gel to simulate a bee. His goal was to mimic the anatomy of a bee and recreate the pollination process while minimizing environmental impact. This “robot bee” showed some promise, as its gel enabled it to camouflage itself, thereby not disturbing the ecosystem it worked in. However, while the drone’s stiff horsehair was able to pollinate the vegetation in its area, its rotor blades damaged the flowers and crops it flew by, forcing Miyako to start fresh.
Shortly after this attempt, Miyako cracked the bee issue. He and his team at the School of Materials Science at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology combined soap bubbles with an unmanned aerial vehicle, which is a device similar to a drone, in order to reinvent the way we look at artificial pollination.
The soap bubbles used in this experiment were chemically-developed so that they would be able to deliver pollen grains to plants. Due to its fluid membrane, large surface area, and sticky nature, the soap bubble substance appears to have a great deal of potential in regards to pollinating vegetation. Additionally, the unmanned aerial vehicles that carry these soap bubbles have the ability to directly shoot them onto the desired plant, mitigating excessive pollination of other species as well as reducing the workload for agricultural workers.
The actual chemistry behind the soap bubbles is quite interesting. The surface of the soap bubble is composed of a molecular bilayer, with the hydrophilic portion of the molecule facing in and the hydrophobic “tails” pointing outward. Pollen grains sit on both sides of the bilayer and are distributed to the flower when the soap bubble bursts at the target site.
In a study conducted by the Japan Advanced Institute in April of 2020, out of 5 surfactants (material used to make the soap bubble), A-20AB performed the best in terms of germination and pollen tube length. This substance is commonly found in baby shampoo and does not interfere with the pollen. The scientists were able to put 2,000 pollen grains onto every soap bubble created with a typical bubble gun, meaning the device will be highly successful in terms of pollination once put out into the field. They also added boron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and gelatine to the bubble solution to increase pollen germination and tube length.
Once Miyako developed an optimal bubble solution, they worked to stabilize the release of the soap bubbles from the aerial vehicles, which primarily revolved around calibrating the vehicle to take the downstream wind created by propellers on the aerial vehicles into consideration.
Scientists outside the main study have provided some critiques to the technology; as James Bird from Boston University pointed out, “the flight path of a bubble can be capricious in even the mildest of breezes, and so this method may be practically limited to orchards blanketed with a high density of accessible flowers.” Adding on, Dave Goulson of the University of Sussex states that bees are still best suited for the task, as they can physically pick up the pollen autonomously. He argues that we must address the issue at the root, by looking into saving bees, stating the following: “It concerns me that our response to the pollination crisis is to find ways to do without pollinators, rather than investing our efforts in looking after our environment better.” Similarly, Lila Westreich, a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington, worries that the bubble solution may be harmful and negatively impact native insects and good bacteria found in the flowers.
Further areas of growth and study for Miyako include addressing these concerns. He is currently designing a bubble solution with a lower environmental impact, claiming “You can drink it, actually.” In addition, he wants to improve the automatic drone vehicle by adding mapping capabilities, path planning, and increased motion control. Scientists are still divided on whether or not his solution will benefit the environment, especially twenty or thirty years down the road. Nonetheless, it's an almost fantasy-like invention to help fix a pressing problem in our world, and a remarkable statement on the applications of material sciences to biology.
What did you learn?
Bees are rapidly disappearing from local areas due to changes in the environment, and this can have cascading effects on our food supply, habitat options for other animals, and even impact our economy.
Scientists have developed a special chemical solution that makes bubbles to deliver pollen grains to flowers in a targeted and efficient fashion, making this invention more effective than existing artificial pollination methods.
There are doubts as to whether or not we should be focusing on artificial pollination, or if we should be working on bringing back bee populations. However, the lead scientist of the soap bubble gun, Eijiro Miyako, is working to improve his invention and make it viable for wide-spread usage.
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No changes were made to the following image: Bee | Bee | Holly Occhipinti | Flickr, License: Creative Commons Legal Code
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