How Robotic Bees Could Help Healthy Colonies, Environment

Researchers aimed to look into how robotic bees could help the queen to stimulate and optimize egg laying, benefiting healthy colonies and the environment.

Bees are essential and experts in pollination.

The potential decline of the bee population could affect the environment, food and agricultural supply.

According to the UN Environment Programme, bees are significant in food supplies and food security.

Bees are helpful to the reproduction of plants for their crucial role in pollination.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the bee population's decline could pose a significant threat to biodiversity and food security.

The reports noted that bees suffer from climate change, habitat loss, widespread pollution, changing weather patterns and excessive use of insecticides and other chemicals.

Role of robotic bees

The project title is robotic replicants for optimizing the site by augmenting living ecosystems.

The report is also published on Phys.org's website.

With the pressing concerns over the threats against bee populations, artificial intelligence and machine learning could be helpful.

Based on the report, the researchers developed robotic bees that could bolster the queen's egg-laying.

Before they deployed the robotic bees, the team looked into queens inside hives that could offer new insights for the project.

The project's initiative would significantly increase or improve the bees' pollination, benefiting plants and the environment.

According to the report, computer scientist Dr. Farshad Arvin explained that it could attain healthier colonies using biological and machine learning approaches.

Part of the project is to design robotic bees that could interact with the queen in the hive.

The project is expected to employ micro-cameras for robotic bees.

The report noted that the project would focus on the queen. The researcher would test the robotic bees and help provide the queen with sufficient nutritious food to optimize egg laying.

On the other hand, the challenge that the project could encounter is how they could make robotic bees less noticeable inside the hives.

The project noted that the bee population is sensitive to foreign objects inside hives.

Did you know? More facts about bees

As mentioned, bees play a crucial role in the environment and pollination process.

According to World Wildlife Fund, about 75% of global crops depend on the bees' pollination.

Amazingly, WWF said that the hives could find a new candidate if the queen bee dies inside the hive.

The bees could select a young larva inside the hive. They take serious care of the young larva by feeding it with royal jelly.

As a result, scientists and conservationists are studying ways to save the bee population from significant decline.

The conservation of bees is vital to the environment, livelihood and communities. The dependence of plants and crops on pollution shows the valuable roles of bees.

Ultimately, bees are hardworking pollinators that benefit humans and biodiversity.

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