Campanula flowers. By Erik StokstadAs pollinators, bees are hard to beat. Still, that hasn’t prevented researchers from working on a high-tech alternative: drones that blow soap bubbles to transport pollen to a flower.It’s a “really cool” approach, says Henry Williams, a roboticist at the University of Auckland, who was not involved in the work.
But some biologists are skeptical that drones will ever be an effective replacement for bees.Several groups have devised devices that mimic pollinating honey bees.
In 2017, Eijiro Miyako, a materials chemist at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, adapted a 4-centimeter-long toy drone to pollinate flowers.