The Drone and the Honey Bee

Abstract

While scientists rush to pin down the cause of colony collapse disorder and race to find a cure, engineers have wondered whether we might one day supplement real bees with mechanical ones. Called DelFly, a miniature robot has been built by an engineering team of the Micro Air Vehicles Laboratory at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The engineers there have various practical applications in mind. For example, when perfected, the bots could flit around greenhouses spotting diseases with their cameras. The robots could also be fitted with apparatuses to perform an even more vital and insect-like task—pollinating crops.