Scientists Find Way To Pollinate Plants With Soap Bubbles As Bees Decline (cnet.com) 80
Researchers have found that soap bubbles can carry pollen grains and deposit them on flowers. CNET reports: "It sounds somewhat like fantasy, but the functional soap bubble allows effective pollination and assures that the quality of fruits is the same as with conventional hand pollination," said Eijiro Miyako, associate professor at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and lead author of a study published in the journal iScience on Wednesday.
The researchers first worked out that soap bubbles could indeed carry pollen. They then tested out different bubble formulations and settled on lauramidopropyl betain, a compound sometimes used in shampoos, as a good vehicle. Now comes the fun part. The researchers used a bubble gun on a pear orchard, "producing fruit that demonstrated the pollination's success," iScience publisher Cell Press said in a release. They also tested out the use of a drone to direct bubbles at flowers, which proved to be an accurate way to deliver the bubbles. The early experiments are promising, but there are still some hurdles around figuring out the most precise way to aim the bubbles and how to deal with potential weather issues like rain or wind.
The researchers first worked out that soap bubbles could indeed carry pollen. They then tested out different bubble formulations and settled on lauramidopropyl betain, a compound sometimes used in shampoos, as a good vehicle. Now comes the fun part. The researchers used a bubble gun on a pear orchard, "producing fruit that demonstrated the pollination's success," iScience publisher Cell Press said in a release. They also tested out the use of a drone to direct bubbles at flowers, which proved to be an accurate way to deliver the bubbles. The early experiments are promising, but there are still some hurdles around figuring out the most precise way to aim the bubbles and how to deal with potential weather issues like rain or wind.
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I don't know what's worst. The photo itself, which any sane person would have looked at the status bar to see the URL and then decide not to click on it, or your description of it which cannot be un-read.
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Umatrix said:
uMatrix has prevented the following page from loading:
(url sapped)
and I didn't challenge it. Isn't this supposed to be a nerd/tecky site?
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I've been stung a number of times. Nasty things. Never been stung by a honey bee though, so they are okay.
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Most animals feel you better than most people can feel themselves.
Considering bees, most of my experience is also with honey bees. I could collect honey without any suit or protection, With more aggressive bee species, all you need to do is make clear that you are not meant to be fooled with. I have encountered them as well and never got bitten. Of course, there is some specimen of animals gone hay wired but it is usually easy to feel it in advance and take cover in that case.
I have all kinds of experience
Finally! (Score:2)
Fire up the sprayers, we can get rid of all those pesky bees now!
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Too right, we can have a nice quiet countryside now, no bees and insects, no small animals to eat those bees or insects, no large animals to eat the small animals. If the wind don't blow it then it won't move.
What could possibly go wrong with sterilising the whole world with man-made chemicals?
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'Merican English Dictionary.
Eco- prefix
Definition of eco-
1 : sucks : infearior to
//automative ecomode
//ecosystems
2 : Liberals
//ecoterrorist
//ecologist
Just use bees (Score:5, Interesting)
Why wouldn't you just use bees? Bees are easy to farm in immense numbers and easy to transport. When some die, rebuilding the population is not difficult.
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Considering... (Score:4, Funny)
Considering the ultimate reality of such a prime pollinator going extinct is nothing that human made bubbles could possibly completely replace I think we need to just keep making sure bee populations are as large as possible.
Except for that one that stung me when I was 5. That one can die in a hell of a billion fires.
Re: Considering... (Score:2)
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Re: Considering... (Score:1)
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They're not cheaper. Wild bees work for free.
Re:Just use bees (Score:4, Informative)
Wild bees do work for free. But honey bees are transported on trucks to farms because they pollinate more effectively. Farmers pay for this service because it improves yield.
Re: Just use bees (Score:2)
Bees are dying off and they donâ(TM)t know why.
Top it off, other invasive species (like those murder hornets) or Africanized bees will attack and destroy a hive.
Bees are why we have fruits, flowers, and most plants. This is more about keeping us alive. Sounds important to me!
Re: Just use bees (Score:5, Informative)
We have known since 2017 [pbs.org]. Unfortunately people in power still think money, an imaginary concept, is more important than life.
Re: Just use bees (Score:1)
That's nonsense. When you look at global distribution there's zero correlation between neonic use and CCD. What we see instead is that CCD spikes are cyclical and happens all over the place. Some countries will have a bad year, and some idiot will tie it to neonic use. A couple years later those countries will be fine, and other countries which never used neonics (or used them at much lower levels) will be having a bad year. None of it makes any sense if you continue to insist that neonics are the sole
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Don't be so fatalistic. Honey bees are not any kind of indication of the health of the ecosystem. They are migrant farm workers. Traveling from farm to farm on trucks to pollinate whatever is in bloom at that moment. Farmers can get by without them. They just have lower yields. And not all crops are pollinated by insects anyway. Some self-pollinate and some are wind pollinated.
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How does that work? Do the farmers go in the fields and yell "go fuck yourself!"?
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How does that work? Do the farmers go in the fields and yell "go fuck yourself!"?
Funny, but it's just the wind blowing.
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Damn, you are both living up to your usernames. Well done!
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The big problem is known now to be that feeding bees corn syrup instead of leaving them 1/3 their honey does not actually nourish them properly and leaves the colony susceptible to collapse due to all causes of stress. That includes certain pesticides, but also mites, etc.
Traditional beekeepers who leave the bees some of their own honey are not having problems with collapse.
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Do all the farmers, all over the world, feed their bees with corn syrup? That sounds like a USA-only thing and yet CCD is not specific to the USA.
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Welcome to the world of industrial factory farming!
The US has a rather extreme viewpoint that the efficiencies of a monoculture trump any amount of sensibility. This means that they can't use natural pollinators for a lot of crops, because there isn't enough habitat for them. Why? Because for miles in every direction it's all one crop. It's an engineered landscape of almonds or tomatoes or apples as far as the eye can see. Further than a bee can travel. And there is food for the bees only for a week or two
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Thank you for your reply, very insightful.
However, when you say "As far as I'm aware there isn't any pesticide use within a mile or two", you're not 100% sure about it and I don't know how far Neonicotinoid pesticides can travel, but surely it can infect water sources. Since bees not only drink water individually, they also use water to keep relative humidity in their hives, if their water sources are infected by Neonicotinoid pesticides then surely it must be a factor for CCD.
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Within a mile or two there are maybe 20 houses, and thousands of acres of fields, wetlands, and forests. There are no commercial crops being grown. So if there are neonicotinoids being used, it's in some dude's backyard garden. That shouldn't be sufficient to kill off a hive of bees, and it shouldn't be making its way into water sources in concentrations sufficient to kill off bees. The amount of natural flowers dwarf what are available for the bees in people's backyard gardens, and they would need to pass
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Bees are dying off and they donâ(TM)t know why.
Top it off, other invasive species (like those murder hornets) or Africanized bees will attack and destroy a hive.
Bees are why we have fruits, flowers, and most plants. This is more about keeping us alive. Sounds important to me!
Every single thing you said was wrong.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Because we rather put poison on our crops that kills insects. Because when we buy our produce, we want to see perfect fruit without scarring and bugs in them.
Future of honey bees (Score:3)
Orchards using bubbles won't need honey bees. There will be less reasons to raise bees.
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Yeah, well... when you consider all the food, the clothing, then later on the college fees... it's getting harder and harder to raise bees properly.
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It's probably better for everyone if we don't raise bees and then move them around. One of the most credible theories for what's happening to them is that all of this relocation results in the rapid spreading of their parasites.
I think it's a typo (Score:2)
"Bubble Bee"
But what about the bees? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Never mind that, how does he know what crap tastes like?
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There's only one adaptation that's successful for a species in the long run and that's: be tasty to humans.
Bees pretty much did this tho - ever had honey?
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Situation: CCD reduces bee populations.
Scientists: Along with studying CCD and ways to mitigate it, let's look for a plan B.
Public: ZOMG the sky is falling, they're trying to replace bees.
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Take a course in capitalism. Milton Friedman. So many people have no clue what capitalism is and the fact there are two different types.
It works, works better than anything else man has come up with.
Bees declined the soap bubbles ... (Score:2)
... what?
Just going with what works (Score:1)
This One is mine. [youtube.com]
Soap Bubbles? (Score:1)
Soap Bubbles?
We are in some serious shit.
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Indeed. Technology will not solve all of our problems. In many cases its absence will.
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If the bees die, the California almond crop dies, would be a more accurate statement. Are you sure those companies are "we?"
Re: Soap Bubbles? (Score:1)
The problem is (Score:3)
Scientists blowing soap bubbles don't make honey,
but do cost money.
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In commercial agriculture, honey bees cost money. Bee pollination is a service provided for a fee to farmers. They order the bees when they are needed and the bee people bring them to the farm on trucks.
Re: The problem is (Score:1)
If this is really needed... (Score:3)
From what I've ready about the loss of insect biomass, I think that we're living through an ecosystem collapse right now, and it's already too late for humans.
Re: If this is really needed... (Score:1)
Colony collapse is not really what you think (Score:3)
Colony collapse is not really what you think. Honey bees are not native in North America. Their collapse is not a collapse of the natural environment. Honey bees do not live in the natural environment. The honey bees are migrant farm workers, traveling all over the region on trucks to pollinate whatever needs to be pollinated at that time. The way they are treated, it is no surprise that they are dying.
There are other pollinators including many native bees. The natives are not as good at pollinating as honey bees, but if honey bee colonies collapse, farmers will probably find a way to encourage the natives.
Colony collapse is probably not going to lead to the extinction of honey bees because it is not as bad as initially thought.
In some agricultural operations pollination has to be carefully controlled to avoid accidental cross-pollination from wide-ranging insects. For seed production it is sometimes necessary to grow large crops in screened off green houses. Maybe bubbles will be useful in those locations.
More chemicals, more better! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a chemical engineer, and thus quite open to using cool solutions involving chemistry, but this is the stupidest idea I've heard in a long time. When it's our neonicotinoids killing the bees in the first place, our solution is to also dump surfactants into the biosphere? How about developing an insecticide that doesn't kill the bees?! Or genetically engineering more resistant bees? Bonus points if the honey tastes better, too!
Re: More chemicals, more better! (Score:1)
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Can we breed bees that will more aggressively attack humans? Pinkie in mouth. Muhahaha! One million dollars!
Man, let's not give anyone ideas. Next thing you know they'll figure a way to have them attack black people, or white people or mexicans.
I'd like to find the guys that messed with ticks and hang 'em. They can carry nasty crap now.
This has little to do with bees (Score:3)
This is a problem of the industry focusing far too much on mono-cultures and extreme industrial farming. Bees are the excuse, but profit is the reason. They're not looking towards bees for the answer, but they're giving up on them and bees are now only getting the blame. They want to use drones with soap bubbles for the answer. It's as if mankind is on a quest of how to look cute while fucking up our relationship with Mother Nature. I bet there will be a manager who will make sure that nobody paints yellow stripes on black drones to maintain the image of a serious business.
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Monoculture and extreme industrial farming is how we feed the world now. It keeps the cost of food low. Otherwise, the price of food rises, people in third world countries start starving, and the working class begins to hurt. You'd sacrifice that all for a "relationship" with something you personify as "Mother Nature"? There is no such entity.
"Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature
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No. It's likely you arrived in modern times by accident, but mankind didn't. It is only now in our modern time that the population explodes and we see obesity on the rise all while others starve. It's the very short-sightedness and egotism, which you display here, that got us into the trouble. The reason why you now want to shit on Mother Nature is because eating is all you do now. You even end your rant with food on your mind.
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Nobody's starving. ...
Then feast your tiny brain on this, if it isn't too busy thinking about what to eat next:
https://www.foodaidfoundation.... [foodaidfoundation.org]
Bumble Bee's (Score:2)
Science to the rescue1 we can keep killing bees. (Score:2)
Honestly?
All I can think is when we start to populate Mars and the bees are having a hard time there, then this will be a stop gap until we sufficiently terra-form that planet.
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Before we go to Mars, we'll get a lot of practice terraforming Earth.
Pubic hair is also a known Pollinator (Score:1)
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