Another Reason We Can’t Live Without Bees: They Can Deliver Pesticides

On David Passafiume's natural homestead a hour north of Toronto, there's a team of many specialists who spread a characteristic pesticide to crops. They work verging on consistently, live on the homestead, and don't get paid: turns out honey bees are glad to do this work for nothing. 

Honey bees have constantly assumed an imperative part in horticulture as pollinators: The USDA assesses each third chomp of sustenance we eat profits by bumble bee fertilization. Be that as it may, a Canadian startup is enrolling honey bees to assist on the ranch recently. Honey bee Vector Technology, or BVT, has planned a framework that permits honey bees to stroll through a plate of a characteristic, mold-battling growth on out of the hive to fertilize blooms. The safe parasite really shields plants from contagious illnesses. 

The organization charges the innovation as a financially savvy, naturally well disposed other option to manufactured fungicides. As more individuals begin paying consideration on the chemicals splashed on their sustenances, producers are searching for new answers for ensure their yields. However, can honey bees truly benefit starting an occupation as pesticide sprayers?

“It works. It’s been night and day, honestly,” farmer Passafiume told me over the phone. He’s been using BVT’s system for seven years to protect his strawberry plants from gray mold, a nasty fungus that Passafiume said could wipe out as much as 60 percent of his crop during bad years. Since he started using BVT, he said the amount of gray mold on his strawberries is nearly zero.

“We just don’t get it. It just doesn’t happen anymore,” he said.

The founders of BVT aren’t the first to consider using bees to spread organic plant protectors, but they’re one of the first to take it to market. BVT has been testing out its technology for years on multiple different crops and recently opened a commercial production facility. Michael Collinson, the CEO of BVT, told me the system should be on the market in North America by late 2017.

Internal studies Collinson sent to me showed that BVT’s technology protected strawberry plants from gray mold just as well as traditional pesticides, and actually resulted in a higher yield: more than double the number of strawberries were harvested from bee-treated plants than pesticide-treated ones. These results haven’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but the general concept behind the technology has been formally studied in the past. Still, there are a number of possible challenges to letting bumblebees dole out natural fungicides.

“One challenge, of course, is ensuring that all or the majority of flowers are visited by bees,” said Patrick Byers, a regional horticulture specialist with the University of Missouri Extension who is an expert in plant pathology. “You’re also delivering a living organism in environmental conditions. These organisms are vulnerable to conditions—if it’s too hot, or too cold, or too dry. You need a way to make sure they arrive to the flower alive.”

It’s also not clear if the technology could work on a large, industrial scale (Passafiume’s family farm grows just 8.5 acres of berries). Byers, who has no affiliation with BVT, told me he wouldn’t write the technology off and said it could prove to be a really innovative approach to fending off plant disease, but said there needs to be more research to prove the concept works. Otherwise, it might be hard to convince farmers to change their ways.

But Collinson told me that’s what BVT is aiming to do right now: convince farmers that this technology not only works just as well as traditional pesticides, but can actually improve their crops and save money. Not worrying about gray mold means farmers can water their plants more readily. Allowing them to plump up and reducing the amount of pesticides saves money in products, equipment, and labor.

Passafiume is already on board and said it’s only a matter of time until other farmers see the benefit.

“There’s that mentality where if you’re not in the sprayer trying to control stuff, you don’t feel like you’ve done your bit. But I can’t imagine, with the results coming in, people won’t make the switch,” Passafiume said. “I’ve been stung a couple of times, but that’s the only downside.”