I am sara🐝, and I want to save the bees!
Over 30% of the world’s crops are pollinated by honeybees [1]. Our diversity in agriculture is largely due to these pollination processes. Some of which include cashews, onions, apples, broccoli, and my personal favorite food that is not on the graphic, avocados, a world without avocados is one in which I would not like to live. A bee-free world will simply not work!
There are many reasons we should save the bees if the avocados didn’t convince you. Bees are actually quite profitable, each year they produce 150 million dollars in honey [2]. The current decline in bee populations is costing us agriculture 5.7 billion dollars and rising [3]. So how many bees are dying? In 1972 we had 4.1 million honey-producing bee colonies, and in 2014 2.7 million and that number is still declining [4]. It’s not just the honeybees either, other types of bees have been added to the endangered species lists. Scientists believe this disappearance is due to what they call colony collapse disorder.
colony collapse disorder: “a disorder of honeybees that is of unknown cause and that is characterized by sudden colony death due to the disappearance of all adult worker bees in a hive while immature bees, the queen bee, and the honey remain” [4]
Below are links to my bee-related work (however it is important to keep in mind that these concepts are meant to add to conservation efforts and research, not replace bees! )
The sarabee
Have you ever seen black mirror? While I know many other organizations are developing a drone bee, the intention of these drone bees is to replace bees, not conserve them. The sarabee is my design for a conservation approach to drone insects. My work is a data collecting drone bee to help scientists gather more information on colony collapse disorder.
The sarabee hive
With the sarabee, it is important to create a way for scientists to extract the data. The sarabee hive is a half dome hive structure for all the sarabees to charge and scientists to load the data collected. There would be an acompanyingn application to track the drones, synthesize the data, and indicate if any of the drones needed maintenance.
Sources:
[1]“To Fight Bee Decline, Obama Proposes More Land to Feed Bees,” Hamodia, 20-May-2015. [Online]. Available: https://hamodia.com/2015/05/19/to-fight-bee-decline-obama-proposes-more-land-to- feed-bees/. [Accessed: 28-Apr-2019].
[2] S. Pain, “The whole food diet for bees,” Knowable Magazine | Annual Reviews, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/sustainability/2017/whole-food-diet-bees. [Accessed: 28-Apr-2019].
[3]National Resource Defense Council, “Why We Need Bees,” National Resource Defense Council, 2011. .
[4]Colony Collapse Disorder,” Merriam-Webster. [Online]. Available: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colony collapse disorder. [Accessed: 06-May-2019].
[5]“Causes,” The Bees in Decline. [Online]. Available: http://sos-bees.org/causes/. [Accessed: 06-May-2019].