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.”

Four ways IoT is saving the environment

The technological advances inherent in the Internet of Things (IoT) are providing researchers, town planners, ecologists and scientists with new ways to not only prevent, but also solve, environmental problems — from toxic water supplies to reducing climate change in rural areas. Here are some of ways IoT is bringing sustainability:

#1. Reducing e-waste

The problem of e-waste is familiar to anyone with old devices. Once a device becomes obsolete or beyond repair, it invariably ends up in landfill, often in another country. While there have been schemes to refurnish phones and computers, the sheer scale of e-waste is a complex problem. Many sustainability experts have suggested that the tech industry should take some responsibility as the enablers of the problem in the first place, and through this process, the notion of the circular economy has grown. A circular economy is characterized as one that “is restorative and regenerative by design and which aims to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times.”

Project Mainstream is global project targeting areas of sustainability thwarted by complexities such as e-waste, using a circular economy model. As connected devices are embedded with chips and sensors, they can be tracked throughout their life cycles. In the future, this means that consumers will be notified when older products can be repaired or refurbished. If a device is returned to the manufacturer  – as an alternative to disposal – the sensors will signal which components can be repurposed or reused. One example, IBM is working to keep industrial products in continuous loops to maximize residual value and ensure that end-of-lease and client-owned IT equipment is refurbished, resold, disassembled or sold as parts, to be used for repair and maintenance work.

#2. Tracking endangered species

IoT technology has enabled scientists, conservationists and citizen scientists to track and quantify endangered species through an increased ability to collect, transmit, store and share data. In the Phillipines, dugongs are photographed by local fishermen then uploaded to a central database. The fishermen, many of whom are unable to read or write, are being trained to use the smartphones and are being provided with local charging facilities. The tracking enables conservationists to lobby for appropriate sea protections where dugongs are situated.

In Australia honey bees are fitted with tiny micro censors by the CSIRO to monitor bee movements. The research is being led by CSIRO and aims to improve honey bee pollination and productivity on farms, as well as help understand the drivers of bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a condition decimating honey bee populations worldwide. The sensors are tiny radio frequency identification sensors that work in a similar way to a vehicle’s e-tag, recording when the insect passes a particular checkpoint. The information is then sent remotely to a central location to help scientists increase their knowledge of bee migration. The censors have also been trialled in Brazil and are predicted to work well in remote locations, particularly when the sensors will be able to generate power from insect movement and store energy in batteries.

#3. Fighting deforestation

The use of drones to monitor deforestation is nothing new, but U.K.-based companyBioCarbon Engineering is working to use drones in the fight against deforestation. In an effort to plant a billion trees a year, drones take detailed 3D images of the landscape to determine the nutrients, biodiversity and topology. This is followed by a precision planting pattern where the drone fires a biodegradable seed pod at each position, each containing nutrients for healthy tree growth. While the program is still in planning stages, it has potential to provide fast and accurate reforestation.

In many tropical countries, there’s a thriving black market for illegally cut timber. Earth Observation, a provider of forest and marine monitoring solutions, has developed an infrared and GPS-based system that creates a unique biometric record of individual trees that have been legally authorized for harvest and uses a smartphone app to transmit data to a tracking system. The system is designed to circumvent opportunities for bribes and falsification of data that allow the trade in illegally cut timber to flourish. Using proprietary algorithms, TreeTAG generates a one-time code that captures precise data on the potential maximum yield of each tree, as well as the species, time, date, and exact location where each tree is felled. If a tree is cut outside of a government-authorized logging concession, the system will not generate a “tag.”

#4. Monitoring the oceans

Where you start thinking about the internet in the ocean you know the possibilities of technology are getting very big. Catalina Sea Ranch is an America’s first off shore shellfish ranch. Besides fishing, they are also working on creating a wireless data capturing system for the ocean.

As CEO Phil Cruver explains:

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Integrated Ocean Observation System (IOOS) provided a NOMAD buoy that will be anchored at our ranch and equipped numerous marine embedded sensors at strategic positions in the horizontal and vertical water plane. The wireless sensor network will help generate continuous real-time data, which will be transmitted to the cloud for remote and independent analysis by research institutions and to offer insights for offshore aquaculture operations.”

In Italy, researchers at SUNRISE are also working to enable seas, lakes and rivers to be digital highways for data transfer from sensors, robots, and underwater vehicles capable of performing tasks too dangerous for humans. These include environmental monitoring  – both shallow and deep water – as well as border control and protection of offshore critical infrastructures, de-mining, surveillance and protection of submerged archaeological sites.  Efforts include an underwater communication system based on acoustic waves, which can travel tens of kilometres under water. It’s a long-term, complex and cross-collaborative protect that, if successful, will revolutionize our understanding of the ocean as we know it.