If you’re already out pollinating, why not just carry a little extra?
The humble bumblebee might help disrupt the multi-billion dollar synthetic pesticide industry. A new system uses bees to help deliver natural pesticides and beneficial fungi directly to plants—and because bees are so much more precise than the typical sprayers on farms, they can use a tiny fraction of the pesticide and make plants stronger.
“Imagine you have an apple orchard,” says Michael Collinson, president and CEO of Bee Vectoring Technology, the Vancouver-based startup behind the technology. “Because apple trees have a very large canopy, even though you may spray it and use a special type of spray that doesn’t go everywhere, you still won’t touch every bloom. Whereas the bees deliver product every single day, to every single bloom.”
The new system, originally developed by researchers at the University of Guelph, uses a tray filled with a patented mix of natural, beneficial microbes. The tray goes in a beehive that farmers already have. When bees head out to pollinate crops—their main job—they walk through the powder on the way, and end up delivering tiny helpful spores to flowers as they make their rounds.
Because the bumblebees deliver the powder directly to plants, they also help avoid runoff, a common problem with traditional pesticides. Typically, pesticide is mixed with hundreds of gallons of water and then sprayed everywhere. “99% of that is going to end up in the wrong place,” he says. “One percent ends up where it’s supposed to be, but 99% ends up in the water, or on the ground, or other non-targeted area.”
Normally, farmers can only spray once or twice while apple trees are in bloom, and because sets of trees bloom at different times, it’s easy to miss about half of the orchard. The bees can deliver their organic pesticide continuously, so fruit ends up stronger and more likely to make it to make it to the grocery store.
The special mix of powders also includes beneficial fungi that helps eliminate common diseases like botrytis, which causes mold. “When you go and buy strawberries and you put them in your fridge and they go gray and fuzzy, that’s botrytis,” says Collinson. “If you use our product from the beginning, you control that disease, and therefore you stop the fruit from actually starting to decay a lot sooner. In some cases we can make 10 to 12 days extra shelf life.”
The company has done years of testing to make sure the process is safe for bees.
Read more: Bumblebees Have A New Job: Delivering Organic Pesticides
The Latest on: Bee pesticide delivery system
[google_news title=”” keyword=”bee pesticide delivery system” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Bee pesticide delivery system
- Neonicotinoids & Honey Beeson April 20, 2024 at 9:32 pm
The National Academy of Sciences has underscored that there are multiple threats to bees, including parasites, pathogens, pesticide exposure, habitat loss, and others, the varroa mite being perhaps ...
- NH beekeepers feel stung by aerial drone pesticide bill; farmers say it's neededon April 19, 2024 at 3:19 am
“We are opposing this bill because pesticides and bees don't mix,” McKeen said ... said he thinks a notification system specifically for beekeepers would be too difficult to create.
- Honey bees experience multiple health stressors out in the fieldon April 16, 2024 at 5:01 pm
It's not a single pesticide or virus stressing ... "Our study is the first to apply systems-level or network analyses to honey bee stressors at a massive scale. I think this represents a paradigm ...
- Brazilian bees decimated by pesticides which are banned in Europeon April 1, 2024 at 5:00 pm
About 75% of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports. In just three years, 193 weed killers and pesticides containing ...
- Class of Pesticides Found to Make Bees Less Socialon March 28, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Neonicotinoid pesticides are nicotine-like chemicals which attack the nervous systems of pests. First widely used in the ... in pollen and nectar of plants and affect pollinators such as bees and ...
- Vermont House passes a bill to restrict a pesticide that is toxic to beeson March 22, 2024 at 12:09 pm
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Vermont's House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill to severely restrict a type of pesticide that's toxic to bees and other pollinators. The bill will now go to the ...
- Amidst Policy Deliberations, Scientist Sounds Alarm on Bee Die-Offs Linked to Neonicotinoid Pesticideson March 22, 2024 at 10:48 am
After a significant number of bee colony deaths linked to neonicotinoid pesticides, scientists like Judy Wu-Smart are rethinking their traditional roles and stepping into the fray of advocacy ...
- With bees swarming earlier this year, here's what you should knowon April 30, 2023 at 10:01 pm
The entire hive, including honeycomb, honey, pollen and the bees themselves, must be removed, or another swarm can move in.” Study: Mites, pesticides, weather threaten bees A study led by Penn ...
- Emergency pesticide authorisation for 2023 sugar beeton January 24, 2023 at 2:51 am
A virus threat to sugar beet crops has sparked an emergency authorisation for farmers to use a controversial pesticide - which was banned over fears it could be killing bees. For the third year ...
- Non-Target Insects and Beneficial Specieson April 1, 2022 at 3:13 am
Declining bee populations diminish pollination services, damaging plant and agricultural biodiversity. One of the causes of this decline is the use of pesticides ... but only in low-intensity ...
via Bing News