Page 28 - Cosmos Edition 3

PLANBEE

The buzz of the beehive is growing silent. A mysterious grim reaper has been killing off
large percentages of the insect population responsible for the majority of the food we con-
sume. Usage of excessive pesticides and chemicals to protect crops from locusts, moths
and other pests has had a negative effect on the bees. In India, last year alone there was a
downfall in population of bees by 3 %

(approx.)

As India is advancing into “digital India”, more cell phone towers and radio transmitters are erected every
day. These towers give out harmful radiations which cause colony collapse disorder in which the worker bees
leave the hive, leaving the queen with some food and a few
nurses. Eventually the food runs out and the nurses too leave
the hive, leaving the queen to die. Without the queen the colo-
ny falls apart as the remaining bees will not be accepted in
other colonies and will be hunted down by birds or killed by
tower radiation.

Colony Collapse Disorder is the term scientists have
coined for the little-understood cause of an approximately 30
percent annual reduction in the number of bees on our plan-
et. The trigger of such “beecide” may be multifactorial, possi-
bly involving pathogens, parasites, pesticides and environment stressors such as climate change and habi-

tat loss.
In Asia alone, honeybees' role in pollination enables the production of crops, including guavas,
mangos, melons and coffee.

One student wanted more people to understand the significance of bees to human life -- so she creat-
ed what's essentially a "bee drone" to be a functional teaching tool that couples technology and design. Plan
Bee is a personal robotic bee (controlled by a smart device) designed by Anna Haldeman to mimic how bees
pollinate flowers and crops. Similar to how bees transfer pollen from one flower to another, the drone sucks
in pollen from a plant and expels it onto other flowers to enable cross-pollination.

"You need sun, water, soil and cross-pollination for that to happen," said Haldewang, 24, a senior at Savan-
nah College of Art and Design in Georgia. Pollination made her think about bees, and in researching, Hal-
dewang was struck by honeybees' struggles: "I had no idea about the danger to honeybee colonies and that
bees were disappearing," she said. It prompted her to create an educational product that both addressed her

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