Soap bubbles that deliver pollen to flowers could offer an alternative way of fertilising plants as bee populations decline, while being more delicate than other methods. Eijiro Miyako at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and his colleagues developed the technique and successfully used it to pollinate a pear orchard. "I jumped for joy," he says. Miyako and his team mixed pear pollen grains with a soap solution containing nutrients and loaded the mixture into a bubble gun. They then used the gun to release bubbles into a pear orchard, with about two to 10 bubbles hitting each flower, and later measured their success rate by counting the flowers that bore fruit.

An artist's illustration shows how a remote-controlled drone might one day be used to pollinate flowers. Courtesy of Dr. Eijiro Miyako hide caption An artist's illustration shows how a remote-controlled drone might one day be used to pollinate flowers. Near Esparto, in the beautiful Capay Valley region of central California, 1,400 young almond trees flourish in a century-old orchard overlooking the hills. Since November, they've stood in perfect rows without a hint of foliage -- resting, naked and dormant, for the upcoming growing season. Their branches now swell with bright pastel blooms in preparation for pollination. Like most almond growers, Brian Paddock, owner of Capay Hills Orchard, relies on bees to provide this important aspect of crop development.

Mini drones sporting horsehair coated in a sticky gel could one day take the pressure off beleaguered bee populations by transporting pollen from plant to plant, researchers said. Roughly three-quarters of the world's flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world's food crops depend on animals to pollinate them, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some of nature's most prolific pollinators are bees, but bee populations are declining around the world, and last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed a native species as endangered for the first time. Now, researchers from Japan said they've taken the first steps toward creating robots that could help pick up the slack from insect pollinators. The scientists created a sticky gel that lets a $100 matchbox-size drone pick up pollen from one flower and deposit it onto another to help the plants reproduce.

It has animal hairs coated with ionic liquid gel to pollinate a flower like a bee. They may be small, but bees and other insects play a critical role in pollination and maintaining a natural balance in our environment. On February 10, 2017, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the rusty-patched bumblebee as an endangered species, now found in only 13 states. Bumblebees and other pollinating insects help pollinate 75 percent of the fruits, nuts, and vegetables we eat and removing them from the equation could trigger a global food crisis according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The short term solution could lie with drones.

MIAMI – Small drones coated with horsehair and a sticky gel could one day help pollinate crops and offset the costly loss of bee populations worldwide, researchers in Japan say. The miniature robots, described in the journal Chem, are a long way from being deployed in the field, but researchers say they may offer a partial solution to the loss of bees due to disease and climate change. "The findings, which will have applications for agriculture and robotics, among others, could lead to the development of artificial pollinators and help counter the problems caused by declining honeybee populations," said lead author Eijiro Miyako, a chemist at the Nanomaterials Research Institute in the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). In 2007, Miyako began experimenting with liquids that could be used as electrical conductors. One failed attempt produced a sticky gel like hair wax that he relegated to a storage cabinet for almost a decade. The gel was rediscovered during a lab cleanup, and its unchanged nature gave Miyako an idea.

One day, gardeners might not just hear the buzz of bees among their flowers, but the whirr of robots, too. Scientists in Japan say they've managed to turn an unassuming drone into a remote-controlled pollinator by attaching horsehairs coated with a special, sticky gel to its underbelly. The system, described in the journal Chem, is nowhere near ready to be sent to agricultural fields, but it could help pave the way to developing automated pollination techniques at a time when bee colonies are suffering precipitous declines. In flowering plants, sex often involves a threesome. Flowers looking to get the pollen from their male parts into another bloom's female parts need an envoy to carry it from one to the other.

The result is a large robotic pollinator described in the journal Chem. In addition to putting together the remote-controlled pollinating drone, Miyako and colleagues also tested the gel on ants, and found that ants with a small coating of the gel attracted more pollen than ants without. Miyako's experiment was inspired by the plight of pollinators like bees around the globe, many of which are currently imperiled by a wide variety of factors. Dave Goulson, a biologist who specializes in the study of bumblebees, says that a combination of factors are leading to the declining health of bee populations worldwide. "The poor bees are short of food, poisoned by pesticides and infected with foreign diseases. There are a few other minor things as well, but you stick all that together and it's hardly surprising that they're not doing so great," Goulson says.

One day, gardeners might not just hear the buzz of bees among their flowers, but the whirr of robots, too. Scientists in Japan say they've managed to turn an unassuming drone into a remote-controlled pollinator by attaching horsehairs coated with a special, sticky gel to its underbelly. The system, described in the journal Chem, is nowhere near ready to be sent to agricultural fields, but it could help pave the way to developing automated pollination techniques at a time when bee colonies are suffering precipitous declines. In flowering plants, sex often involves a threesome. Flowers looking to get the pollen from their male parts into another bloom's female parts need an envoy to carry it from one to the other.

A drone that can pollinate flowers may one day work side by side with bees to improve crop yields. About three-quarters of global crop species, from apples to almonds, rely on pollination by bees and other insects. But pesticides, land clearing and climate change have caused declines in many of these creatures, creating problems for farmers. Pollination is needed for reproduction in flowering plants. Male flower parts, or stamens, produce pollen that fertilises female parts, known as pistils, to make seeds.