It's cold so all is quiet around the hive.... but if you press your ear against the roof and listen very carefully you will hear mutterings of consternation - the bees are discussing 'Robobee', a bug-sized unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or 'drone' being developed at Harvard.
Calling a UAV a 'drone' is offence enough to a honey bee, but what's really got the colony buzzing is the suggestion that Robobees could be used to provide pollination services to farmers.
Thus far the bees had been feeling rather self-important; average earnings in the USA had risen to 1 cent a month (see Workers Wages) and attempts by Chinese apple growers to hand-pollinate blossom with a paint brush dipped in a bag of pollen was proving an expensive failure. Even aerial bombardment of crops with pollen had flopped, producing lower quantities and smaller fruit.
It seemed as though agriculturalist were finally accepting that monoculture and indiscriminate use of insecticides was not a good way to farm; hedgerows, judicious insecticide use, and wild-flower field margins were the way forward, .... until Robobee appeared.
Suddenly the bees are feeling less secure. So what if they are wiped out - Robobee will fly to the rescue and pollinate those apples, almonds, onions, alfalfa etc .... for a fee.
The technical challenges of producing a UAV pollinator are enormous, which is part of the attraction for academics, as are the commercial gains for the tech giants should we succeed in destroying our insect pollinators.
But there's one thing they've overlooked. Robobee won't make honey, so there's hope for my bees yet.
