by Russ McSpadden
8 April 2013

from EarthFirstNews Website

 

Pollinators participate in the sexual-reproduction of plants.

When you eat an almond, beet, watermelon or sip on coffee, you’re partaking of an ancient relationship between pollinators and flowers.

But since the 1990s, worldwide bee health has been in decline and most evidence points to toxic pesticides created by Shell and Bayer and the loss of genetic biodiversity due to the proliferation of GMO monocrops created in laboratories by biotech companies like Monsanto.

But never worry, those real life pollinators - the birds and the bees, as they say - may soon be irrelevant to the food needs of civilization.

Harvard roboticists are developing a solution to the crisis: swarms of tiny robot bees made of titanium and plastic that can pollinate those vast dystopian fields of GMO cash crops.

The Harvard Microrobotics Lab has been working on its Micro Air Vehicles Project since early 2009.

Borrowing from the biomechanics and social organization of bees, the team of researchers is undergoing the creation of tiny winged robots to fly from flower to flower, immune to the toxins dripping from petals, to spread pollen.

They even believe that they will soon be able to program the robobees to live in an artificial hive, coordinate algorithms and communicate amongst themselves about methods of pollination and location of particular crops.  

Of course, published reports from the lab also describe potential military uses - surveillance and mapping - but the dime-sized cyber-bees have yet to be outfitted with neurotoxin tipped stingers.

If you think this bee news is strange, be sure to check out this below recent article from the newswire: Anarchist Beekeepers Claim Responsibility for U.S. Drone Attack.

Anarchist Beekeepers

...Claim Responsibility for U.S. Drone Attack
10 April 2013
from EarthFirstNews Website

The Earth First! Journal office received this short video in which a group of self described anarchist beekeepers take credit for a recent attack on a media drone by a swarm of bees.

The video appears to come from a camera mounted on the drone itself. In a separate communiqué, the group taking responsibility say they hacked the news corporation to access the footage. At the end of the video you will see an image of the drone itself.

In several instances one can see individual bees land on the lens of the camera. It looks as though the bees swarm the vehicle and bring it down.

It is difficult to tell if anyone was injured during the attack.