Are Robot Bees The Future? | Planet Fix | BBC Earth Science

It sounds like a sci-fi dystopia, swarms of robot bees flying around our previously quaint countrysides. But could they actually be part of the solution and help to revolutionise farming?
Best of Earth Science: bit.ly/EarthLab...
Best of BBC Earth: bit.ly/TheBestO...
#EarthWeek #Bees #PlanetFix
This is a channel from BBC Studios who help fund new BBC programmes. Service information and feedback: bbcworldwide.co...

[@jesrush]

How about we just save the bee’s we have!

[@delcim]

easier to create complicated tiny robots

[@geoffreylungu8052]

Thus the easiest thing than making a robot bee 🐝 sister!! God bless you

[@mimszanadunstedt441]

@@delcim yeah ones that require tons of parts that pollute more lol

[@liant89]

There is a Black mirror episode specifically warning about this

[@friendlybane]

If we don't solve the root cause of the bees going extinct, the issue will persist.

[@lknanml]

That would be humans... We have a better chance of making robot bees than fixing the human condition on Earth.... We are in the 6th mass extinction. At this point all we can do is slow it down. It's probably already too late for Frogs and Bees. Wilds ones that is.

[@tiouip]

Yep, humans. Eliminate ‘em and, bingo!😊

[@keesnuyt8365]

In my opinion, regulating Monsanto et all is the better anf cheaper solution

[@matejapavlic8519]

Many animals depend on insects as a source of food - a declining bee population puts those species at risk, too. And what about the animals that would mistakenly ingest such tiny robots (if they were insect-size)? This is a concern even if the robots were used to assist in building inspections rather than pollinating. Such robots could be very useful in many cases but there are a great many aspects to take into consideration before deploying them in the real world.

[@nicstroud]

Professor Dave Goulson gets my vote. I was watching this video and thinking the exact same thing. Imagine spending our time and resources saving the bees rather than building an army of replacements.

[@annestank]

I realize that some in the comments feel this would be a waste of time... BUT there are areas in the world where the population has been decimated and human beings had to be hired to do pollination by hand. This could be a solution for those areas.

[@TheBobobobob123]

Just because we could, doesn’t mean we should

[@farqueueman]

agree, best to fast indefinitely when there aren't any bees left and all the crops die. I reckon I could fast for the rest of my life.

[@MrBobconner1952]

Same thing people were saying about the inventions such as automobiles, light bulbs, refrigerators, clothes washers and dryers, radio, etc....... Technological advances are what drives civilization. Without advances in technology, we'd still be wondering the planet nude and barefoot, hunting and gathering to survive. Without pollination due to the decline of honeybees at hand, the planet will not survive - no plants for us, or the animals we eat to survive, will exist.

[@afhdfh]

This will be a whole new problem for the bees' predators.

[@herok4306]

It's so sad to know that these amazing gifts of nature is disappearing. And we are now planning to replace them 😟

[@papagaaiable]

We should do much more to keep the environment healthy so we don't need all these artificial stuff. What you don't destroy you don't need to repair!

[@autohmae]

@@papagaaiable based on how things are going, it might be to late for that

[@luciferotto]

Uhhh hell no

[@house102]

interesting, I think they should think outside the box, not to build a bee size robot(due to technology limitation), but more like have the standard drone size, but with tentacles, which can do the pollination.

[@amirch613]

Just save the remaining bees insted.

[@Liquid278]

No we shouldn’t, we should just protect the damn bees 🙄

[@john_hailstone]

Can we keep natural bees and replace humans with robots instead?

[@naeemajilforoushan5784]

This type of research are 100% very useful for humans and nature, I have been following this research for a long time and I am very interested in it. Robots should be used for a peaceful and good world.

[@keesnuyt8365]

So, how expensive would you think this robot-pollinated food would cost? Saving the bees is MUCH cheaper

[@alecheesacker4460]

Simple! Have A Bee Helicopter Carrier pick up the Bee Drones, and drop them off at a pollen collection flower area, have the drones suck the pollen into their canisters, and then fly the drones back into the Bee Helicopter Carrier as to be dropped off at a unpollenated location, and release the pollens out of the canisters. You would be wowed! I could see that happening! In fact, I have a diagram of what it would look like!

[@amparochavez]

Shoudnt it be easier to protect the actual bees and let them be?

[@eowynmoonlight]

... Like robotic bees are great... But real bees are better. Just make the world better for these small animals and animals in general (cute fish, rabbits, butterflies..) They deserve to live, they deserve our help!

[@user-en5ub7po80o]

Planet Fix. Full Series | Slime, Plastic-Eating Worms & Other Ways To Fix The World.The future belongs to people? robotic - humanoid -android - bees? Planet Х. Apocalypse. Survival simulator on a lifeless planet with terraforming, crafting and open world. «The Secret of the Third Planet»- a full-length animated film by Roman Kachanov, based on the story «Alice’s Journey» by K.

[@boredtuna001]

If the worst were to happen, we could always clone the bees artificially, deploying a swarm of miniature robots on a global scale is plain dumb.

[@MNSweet]

Was very interested in the video but couldn't finish it due to the background track in the interviews with the high-pitched tinging. I'm not sure how may others have my sensory disability so it may be just unfortunate loss for me that the noise was in those high frequencies.

[@ags911]

Just cover your phone speakers with a few layers of clothes to dampen the high frequencies.

[@mctobi2921]

As long as they are not self reproducing using cheap material, they are not feasible

[@Srt3D01-db-01]

Plant more flowers at the park, provide more bees and educate the public and probaby have some hives at the city tops. The robobee concept is so utterly stupid and nobody asked for. Is not only polinization but the honey production. As a robotics engineer, good exercise to see if its possible but nah thats why bees work waaaymore efficient

[@matekochkoch]

Short answer: No. Why simply by number.

[@Petch85]

Two things. 1. Way do we treat the symptoms not the dessise. Stop killing the bees. 2. Way do we need to come up with stupid reasons to study stuff. Do the study learn stuff and then see what we can use it for. You cannot predict what new science can be used for. Think of the telescope, microscope, electricity, lasers, transistor, leds and so on.way study dead frog legs moving, or a compass needle moving? How can that change the world?🤷

[@jodyknight]

Why do we do these weird things?? It's a very good question to ask. The frog legs and decapitated dog's heads?! It's all madness and avoiding the real problem,...which is us. If we just stopped being so selfish and shared better everything could be so much better.

[@DragonOnNashe]

How much would this cost?

[@ZElphear-qv4ix]

Everyone cut the sh*t! Make GM cyborg bees, it's the only way for both man and bee to benefit.

[@gerardjagroo]

Robobees sounds like something very difficult to compass with current technology. How about genetically modifying the bees make them more robust and adapted to the changing environment?

[@keesnuyt8365]

How about banning the "crop protection chemicals" that kill the bees?

[@PokeRetroFan]

this is how the Skynet of the bee world begins smh

[@amitrajyaguru2597]

Great!

[@sohistoriatriste9428]

Mais amor para um mundo melhor

[@MMPAspergerian]

That's not hummingbird size!!!

[@lauraw.7008]

Robot bees just means more and more waste.

[@thecivilunrest2970]

Farming will be held to account on the hire of these robotic bee's. Not complying to the government's requirements means no crops. No crops equals no farming, no goods means no revenue. The Farm will be sold to the government and that's the less food in the chain.

[@gabrieldiaz5879]

robot bees how stupid , yes lets take of the real bees

[@Life_42]

Imagine everything on Earth that is life is a form of robots made by another advanced civilization. We are just "biological robots".

[@olising8843]

Really? REALLY?

[@chrilin5107]

7.50 until this man opened his mouth nothing made much sense...agree with him that we could just stop spraying and save both honey bees, wild bees and other pollinators like bats and butterflies by working with nature instead of wasting resources on high tech bees🤯

[@huldu]

It's an interesting problem to solve but this just seems so far fetched, at least where we stand today. The cost alone would make this not feasible in reality. If we look at a regular colony of bees it houses thousands and thousands of bees all doing their thing, every day. The replicate that with AI bees just seems like such a massive hurdle to overcome - but of course not impossible. I'm sure that in the near future the size of the bees will probably have come close to real bees but still the COST of producing these things on a large scale would be out of this world. The more realistic approach is figure out ways to skip the pollination part with flowers by mutation and things like that. It'll have a lot of issues on its but is far more realistic than millions of AI bees.

[@DeborahRosen99]

The sheer amount of data that an AI hive would have to handle on a day-to-day basis makes putting that into anything other than the biological hive that evolved to do just that impactical. The cost in energy trying to maintain a silicon-based server to manage that data for just one hive would be insane: an average-sized hive of honeybees (A. mellifera) runs around 20-25k bees, not counting the larvae... and tens of thousands of hives are trucked into to California every year just to handle a single almond harvest.

[@trismica]

hopfully not

[@Drizzy6ixx]

Hey you. If you're reading this hope all is well and have a great day please.

[@Petch85]

You too

[@dekelpolak4190]

Can Humans be Tamed? We need to develop ourselves as human beings beyond our animate level of existence, and it is possible with a certain kind of education. Developing ourselves as human beings means learning and balancing ourselves with the integral laws of nature operating on our lives. If we learn how to positively connect among each other in human society, with altruistic attitudes replacing our current egoistic attitudes, we then develop ourselves beyond the animate level of existence and become human beings in the fullest sense of the term. First, we need to provide for our animate lives, giving our physical bodies the food, sex and family that they require, then after taking care of those essentials, we can begin our human development. We then need to learn who and what we are, where we are from, why we exist, how we can develop ourselves, how we can control our human development, what our attitude to our surrounding society should be, what society’s attitude should be toward us, and how we can develop together harmoniously, i.e. us in relation to society, and society in relation to us. We need to supply ourselves with this development that will make us human beings. Unfortunately, I see nobody understanding what it means to develop a human being, and we thus fail to realize such a process. One of the outcomes of our lack of development into human beings is our inability to understand the younger generation. We become increasingly detached from them, and do not know what will happen with them or how to guide them in a beneficial direction. We thus let life unfold as it does, into a proliferation of problems and crise. Very simply, we need to learn what nature wants from us, and to develop in order to balance with nature’s demands toward us. If we meet those demands, we can then build a harmonious and peaceful world, one that is in balance with nature.

[@nanajin3164]

Am the only one who watched Black Mirror? 😳

[@mimszanadunstedt441]

Please no.

[@chrilin5107]

1.02 how about stop spraying the bees until they die off...and edit 2.38 how about all these clever people figure out ways to save wildlife, reduce our waste, reform agriculture. Away from mono cultures of feed crops, transport, factory farms, waste and high resource use of water/petroleum products and supermarkets to a healthy and sustainable system that also would benefit human health and the good of our environment instead of making massive corporations rich while ruining everything else.

[@aiksi5605]

"Avoid predators" What? XD I mean, i guess the only predators would be humans... With a baseball bat

[@LauraBabinska0]

it's very stupid solution to bees problem.

[@ronjdaintree4109]

Why don't u increase bee fertility ...........? Make more bees! .......

[@dotter8]

Robot bees could not make honey. Just saying...

[@hiranga]

Insanity. Brief: engineer a bee, evolved over millions of years, in order to replace them. I'm sorry; are we preventing the apocalypse? Or accelerating it?🤦🏾‍♂🤦🏾‍♂🤦🏾‍♂🤦🏾‍♂🤦🏾‍♂

[@willtrott-c9p]

veganism is the future