Hair Spacing Keeps Honey Bees Clean During Pollination

[BeeMaster2]

With honey bee colony health wavering and researchers trying to find technological ways of pollinating plants in the future, a new Georgia Tech study has looked at how the insects do their job and manage to stay clean.
According to the study, a honey bee can carry up to 30 percent of its body weight in pollen because of the strategic spacing of its nearly three million hairs. The hairs cover the insect's eyes and entire body in various densities that allow efficient cleaning and transport.
The research found that the gap between each eye hair is approximately the same size as a grain of dandelion pollen, which is typically collected by bees. This keeps the pollen suspended above the eye and allows the forelegs to comb through and collect the particles. The legs are much hairier and the hair is very densely packed -- five times denser than the hair on the eyes. This helps the legs collect as much pollen as possible with each swipe. Once the forelegs are sufficiently scrubbed and cleaned by the other legs and the mouth, they return to the eyes and continue the process until the eyes are free of pollen.
The Georgia Tech team tethered bees and used high speed cameras to create the first quantified study of the honey bee cleaning process. They watched as the insects were able to remove up to 15,000 particles from their bodies in three minutes.
"Without these hairs and their specialized spacing, it would be almost impossible for a honey bee to stay clean," said Guillermo Amador, who led the study while pursuing his doctoral degree at Georgia Tech in mechanical engineering.
This was evident when Amador and the team created a robotic honey bee leg to swipe pollen-covered eyes. When they covered the leg with wax, the smooth, hairless leg gathered four times less pollen.
The high-speed videos also revealed something else.
"Bees have a preprogrammed cleaning routine that doesn't vary," said Marguerite Matherne, a Ph.D. student in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. "Even if they're not very dirty in the first place, bees always swipe their eyes a dozen times, six times per leg. The first swipe is the most efficient, and they never have to brush the same area of the eye twice."
The research also found that pollenkitt, the sticky, viscous fluid found on the surface of pollen grains, is essential. When the fluid was removed from pollen during experiments, bees accumulated half as much.
"If we can start learning from natural pollinators, maybe we can create artificial pollinators to take stress off of bees," said David Hu, a professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and School of Biological Sciences. "Our findings may also be used to create mechanical designs that help keep micro and nanostructured surfaces clean."
The study, "Honey bee hairs and pollenkitt are essential for pollen capture and removal," is published in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.

[bwallace23350]

Interesting stuff but just maybe we can stop poisoning bees and we can have them do their job naturally.

[BeeMaster2]

BW, I agree but they are always trying to replace everything with robots.
Won't be long before robots replace us. 
Jim

[herbhome]

Can't wait until Sweet Wife has a firewood cutting robot!

[bwallace23350]

BW, I agree but they are always trying to replace everything with robots.
Won't be long before robots replace us. 
Jim

That is true. Have you ever read the Time Traveler by HG Wells? I fear our future is to be like the Elliotes and the Morlocks.

[Bush_84]

In many ways robots have replaced us and are replacing us. Ever wonder where the jobs have really gone?  Machines. It's cheaper to run a machine than pay a person and machines have made many jobs extinct. Apparently experts believe that self driving cars will put truck drivers out of a job in my lifetime.

[Acebird]

It's cheaper to run a machine than pay a person and machines have made many jobs extinct.

Yes they do.
What gets lost in this thought is that machines create many more good paying jobs in the long run and secondly grow an economy.  Just take a look around your house and try to come up with something you see in your house that could be made without a machine that you could still afford.  Without machines there is not anything in your house you could afford.  So if everything goes back to manual labor only the filthy rich would have it.  And that is only 1% in this country.
Machines are why your life is easier then your parents and machines are why your kids lives are easier than yours.  If we stop making machines that make these mundane jobs extinct then the pendulum will swing back the other way.

[Bush_84]

While that's not an incorrect statement you are also swinging the pendulum 180. I believe that there was once a better middle ground. Where there were more jobs out there and things were mechanized. That's not to say I dislike my machines. My life would be hell without my car, tractor, phone, etc. We have gotten quite a bit off topic however. 😅

[Acebird]

We have gotten quite a bit off topic however. 😅

Yes we have, sorry Jim.

[Barhopper]

It's cheaper to run a machine than pay a person and machines have made many jobs extinct.

Yes they do.
What gets lost in this thought is that machines create many more good paying jobs in the long run and secondly grow an economy.  Just take a look around your house and try to come up with something you see in your house that could be made without a machine that you could still afford.  Without machines there is not anything in your house you could afford.  So if everything goes back to manual labor only the filthy rich would have it.  And that is only 1% in this country.
Machines are why your life is easier then your parents and machines are why your kids lives are easier than yours.  If we stop making machines that make these mundane jobs extinct then the pendulum will swing back the other way.

Can you say China?