Robotic Bees to Pollinate Monsanto Crops

Oh Monsanto, how I loathe thee, let me count the ways. The words I would use to describe my distaste for this company have not been invented. There isn't a word profane enough in all of creation that suitably expresses my disdain.

Yes, robot bees, just what we need. Next they'll tell us we need Skynet too....

Originally posted by rickymouse
Bees do that for nothing. Why would anyone want to buy an expensive mechanical bee

Do these mechanical bees make honey

I'll stick to bee husbandry along with getting rid of dangerous chemicals and genetics that hurts the bees.

4 words.........The Bees are Dying.......

I wonder just how well these bees are going to work. As others have pointed out, there are issues with the weather and predators. I suppose we shall see...
Honestly, the first thing I thought of when I read the thread title was the sentient, self-replicating, nano-swarm(s) straight out Micheal Crichton's, "Prey"
Give it 20 or 30 years
Nice post OP

Originally posted by rickymouse
Bees do that for nothing. Why would anyone want to buy an expensive mechanical bee

Do these mechanical bees make honey

I'll stick to bee husbandry along with getting rid of dangerous chemicals and genetics that hurts the bees.

Because the natural alternative is being killed and they dream of controlling everything about agriculture?

reply to post by Cancerwarrior
Flying from flower to flower, sampling for Monsanto DNA. If found reported to the hive. The hive sends killer robobees to prevent natural bees from non gmo crops. Robobees with stingers kill attorneys for the competition. Robobees take photos of you sunbathing in your yard to sell to online porn sites. Robobees crash into your radiator to disable your car if you post negative comments about Monsanto. Robobees cause nature to respond by evolving plants with micro EMP emitters. Nature finds that EMP destruction of human power grid is good for its natural inhabitants. Nature evolves ways to cut the power to your television set if you watch crap tv shows. Go momma N.

I can pollinate plants with a paintbrush fairly fast. A mechanical bee is not needed. Science cannot fix the mess they have created it seems. Science is not evil but it creates tools for those who would want to dominate us to succeed.

reply to post by InnerSense


You're looking at it wrong. The robotic bees are not some sought after "end", they are a means. You're seeing the costs and difficulty from an "end" perspective.

What's to stop them from making a smart grid overlaid on fields to wirelessly transfer power and controls?

The bee is evolved to have a balance between its physiology and the use of pollen as a food source. The robot bee need not have such a balance. Likewise, if the end goal is not food, but rather pollination, then you probably need less bees. Think about it...the bee goes from flower to flower collecting pollen. The act of pollination is incidental from the bee's perspective, it needs to collect x amount of calories through the pollen to sustain the hive. Once a flower is pollinated, it's pollinated...the bees keep going looking for more pollen just the same, cause they're hungry.

In truth, the seeds have probably been modified for the plants to be harvested at the same time within a given strain, on a given field, so having a set window to pollinate probably would allow the same robot "hive" to do multiple fields every day.

Originally posted by rickymouse
Bees do that for nothing. Why would anyone want to buy an expensive mechanical bee

Do these mechanical bees make honey

I'll stick to bee husbandry along with getting rid of dangerous chemicals and genetics that hurts the bees.

Cause all the poisonous crap you need to spray on Monsanto crops is killing bees.

Bee research firm that proved that the use of neonicotinoids based pesticides on gmo crops is killing bees, recently got bought by Monsanto to keep them quiet. Look up Bee Logics.

Monsanto knows their poisonous crap will kill all the bees so they're presenting themselves as technological saviors. Its bullcrap.

Or they came up with this on purpose. Kill all bees and be the only company with robot bees = make more profit$

Now somebody just needs to develop a device that emits some kind of signal that interferes with the mechanism inside these things and damages them. Surely these can't be cheap, and if they were repeatedly destroyed it would become quite the nuisance to Monsanto.

Originally posted by Xaphan
Now somebody just needs to develop a device that emits some kind of signal that interferes with the mechanism inside these things and damages them. Surely these can't be cheap, and if they were repeatedly destroyed it would become quite the nuisance to Monsanto.

We're better off programing A.I. to come up with the best possible strategies to bring down Monsanto once and for all.

This is one sick monopoly.

Monsanto, the birth place of Satan and the Anti-Christ. Brought to you by third world rapings and farmer suicides.

Originally posted by rickymouse
Bees do that for nothing. Why would anyone want to buy an expensive mechanical bee

Do these mechanical bees make honey

I'll stick to bee husbandry along with getting rid of dangerous chemicals and genetics that hurts the bees.

Because THIS year...more than HALF the pollinators are DYING before they can do that work:
"A conclusive explanation so far has escaped scientists studying the ailment, colony collapse disorder, since it first surfaced around 2005. But beekeepers and some researchers say there is growing evidence that a powerful new class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, incorporated into the plants themselves, could be an important factor."

from www.nytimes.com...

reply to post by Opportunia

Real good catch on that. I DO so wish I could argue that because if true, it's doom on a stick and that's all folks. At least without these infernal robo bees or something similar. It's not just a media story, but the subject of a recently filed Federal Lawsuit.

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - U.S. environmental regulators illegally approved overuse of pesticides that caused honeybee colony collapse disorder, threatening agriculture throughout North America, nonprofits claim in Federal Court.

VERY Uncool I say.

"Due to EPA's actions and inactions alleged herein, clothianidin and thiamethoxam are spread widely throughout hundreds of millions of acres of both agricultural and neighboring lands. The neighboring lands are where these toxic compounds are not intended to be and are often lands not owned by the farmers applying the compounds. These lands adjacent to agricultural fields in many cases are prime remaining bee and native insect habitats. Due to the long persistence of these compounds and the uncontrollable drifting and blowing of contaminated dust and soil, bees and other insects are victims of multiple exposure pathways that EPA failed to assess when the agency approved the pesticides - and still has failed to assess. Key among these exposure pathways are residues in pollen and nectar, dust from treated seeds and soils, planter exhaust, untreated but contaminated non-crop plants adjacent to treated fields, contaminated puddles in fields and adjacent surface water, guttation [the secretion of water from the pores of plants] droplets on both treated and untreated but contaminated plants and residue from foliar uses," the complaint states.

and of course... always one more kick to the shorts when it's the Government involved. The EPA is just going APE about regulating everything remotely possible to even passingly overlap to it's own jurisdictions but claim THIS is totally beyond anything they can do a thing about. Can't help. So sowwy. Yeah.... Right.... So this is the closing note this lawsuit story ends on for what I found.

"As a result, clothianidin- and thiamethoxam-treated seeds will continue to be planted across hundreds of millions of acres in 2013 and beyond. To date, EPA has provided no formal direction or label changes to farmers on how to minimize non-target effects, how and where to clean out crop planters, or what steps to take to avoid effects to nearby honey bees or insect-pollinated plants. In short, the imminent hazard the defendants have allowed will reinitiate in about April 2013, when corn and other crop planting season begins again," according to the complaint.

Source

I do so hope we HAVE some bees left by the end of this ...and Monsanto? Well, the embodiment of EVIL is how I'd term them and with no qualifications to that, either. It's money, money and oh, yeah, power just to add variety to the mix. EVIL. Who needs an asteroid or TPTB? Losing the simple Honey Bee (and bat, who eats insects..while we're at it) is all we need to have our OWN colony collapse eventually. Robo-bees won't pollinate the natural world. At least not enough to replace the humble little honey bee.

Originally posted by DaTroof
reply to post by baddmove

 

That line about toxins is pure spin from the article. Have you ever done gardening? Have you ever used weedkiller or pesticide? OMG TOXINS!?! Pure spin. I thought people on this website knew how to identify bunk speech in news articles.

i don't agree with using such pesticides that are sprayed on the outside, but monsanto plants have their genes spliced with all kinds of strange things (bacterium, for instance) so that the pesticides are produced inside the plant. there is no washing it off, or removing it in any way.

"but plants produce their own pesticides internally, and those don't harm humans" i hear you say. if those pesticides are so effective then why splice gene sequences into plants so they'll make different pesticides?

the nutritional value of the plants go down the drain, and the poison stays in. GENIUS!

But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.” 1 Samuel 8:6-9

Originally posted by rickymouse
Bees do that for nothing. Why would anyone want to buy an expensive mechanical bee

Do these mechanical bees make honey

I'll stick to bee husbandry along with getting rid of dangerous chemicals and genetics that hurts the bees.

Well people WILL buy (or more likely rent from Monsanto) such devices after Monsanto has killed off the world's pollinating insects. And now I can see another why Monsanto would have be so keen on pushing its GMO crops and various pesticides.

No doubt Monsanto or other big-Agro companies will develop 100% high-frutose corn-syrup based pseudo honey. Oh yeah, they already have...

First Monsanto kills all the "free" "mother nature" bees.

And then they supply their own, manufactured robotic bees.

Sounds like good work if you can get it.

Monsanto sure knows how to corner a market and get rid of it's competition. There might not be
any better example in history of this practice in action...short of war.

reply to post by Cancerwarrior


Making robot bees is very raw thinking, consequences are devastating, firstly to bird species who snaps and swallow all kind of insects. Birds die off. Then die off all kind of mammal species who eats these fallen carcasses with metallic and battery operated "bees".

In nature, species which are toxic or stings like bees and wasps are marked with warning colour and therefore birds know when avoid swallow things like wasps. Okey, Monsanto mimics these robobees looks like real bees, but there are species who are specialised eat bees and only bees. They die off then.

Sooner or later Monsanto need give birth a robotic man who are happy to live in this #hole.

Originally posted by Konesto
reply to post by Cancerwarrior

 

Making robot bees is very raw thinking, consequences are devastating, firstly to bird species who snaps and swallow all kind of insects. Birds die off. Then die off all kind of mammal species who eats these fallen carcasses with metallic and battery operated "bees".

In nature, species which are toxic or stings like bees and wasps are marked with warning colour and therefore birds know when avoid swallow things like wasps. Okey, Monsanto mimics these robobees looks like real bees, but there are species who are specialised eat bees and only bees. They die off then.

Sooner or later Monsanto need give birth a robotic man who are happy to live in this #hole.

No worries, Bro. Once all the birds are killed off by eating robot bees, then Monsanto will sell/rent robot birds to farmers and the government (birds are clearly needed to keep insect populations in hand). It's a win/win situation for Monstanto.

From what I see when watching other insects pollinate plants, it appears that the bee doesn't just pollinate the flower. It has some enzymes or something that it leaves on the flower. When the big black jointed hornets pollinated my tomatoes, there were so many tomatoes on the plant and the plants grew super big, twelve foot in length and full of neverending suckers. They interacted with the plant somehow. When the ants pollinated the apple blossoms they made button apples that never developed. I don't think those mechanical bees will produce good fruit and veggies myself.

I hope this long winter won't kill the bees here, I have become friends with them. I study their ways. I also watch the wasps and spiders scraping the different plants gaining chemicals to use to kill or hurt things that bother them. The bite of a harvester spider packs a punch when you pull it's legs off. I find nothing of this phenomenon recorded in science, they only mention glands that produce poisons, not the intelligence of the bugs to collect toxins and chemicals. This may be in some articles I can not get access to though.

As some have already mentioned you can pollinate your own garden with a bit of extra work. But real bees and other flying insect do it with out you having to lift a finger...well cept for the prepping the ground, planting, weeding,watering, harvesting etc etc....

vegetablematter.blogspot.ca...