Bees can be scary and sometimes also annoying, but they are very useful for the survival of the human species.  Over 75% of the world’s food production is dependent on bees. Without bees and their pollinators, food supply will be drastically reduced.  Walmart, the world’s largest retailer has developed drones that act as pollinators. These “drone bees” are supposed to help make up for the decline in bees and other insects that pollinate crops and plants.  The company published a patent on the 8th of March. In this patent, small drones will be used in the pollination of crops.

These drones will be programmed to move from plant to plant gathering and depositing pollen. There is also going to be a second drone right behind the first one making sure the pollen is properly deposited.  Walmart’s proposal has become necessary because pollinators are declining in number, which is a huge concern for the entire world’s food supply. There are many commodities like rice, wheat, corn etc., that don’t need pollination. But others like blueberries, almonds, peaches, apples and many more are dependent on the work of pollinators to reproduce.

In the past, several researchers have tried different techniques to replicate bee pollination. They’ve used crop duster planes to spread pollen across fields, sprayed crops with pollen and even used hand applied paint brushes.  In the last few years, several robotic drone pollinators have been proposed. A Japanese team at the Institute of Advanced Industrial Science used a 1.5-inch drone to cross-pollinate Japanese lilies in 2017. But the attempt was inefficient and expensive. The effort could not be compared to natural pollination by bees or other insects.

The patent proposed by Walmart plans to use small drones that will act like bees and collect pollen, which will be deposited on other plants. This process will be controlled by human operators.  In the patent, Walmart reveals their plans to use audio output to as a means of communication between the drones. Although the sounds will not mimic that of buzzing bees, the company states that they could make it sound insect-like.

Recently, drones have been used by many companies to simplify business processes in different use cases. Using drones as pollinators is a positive step because of the threat of extinction of the species of insects that help facilitate crop production.  There are hundreds of billions of dollars worth of food and agricultural products produced annually. If this production reduces by any small margin, it could affect the entire world on a larger scale.

Walmart’s drone for pollination seems realistic and unique. It is the closest any researcher or company has come to proposing a pollination system that may be effective.  Unfortunately, Walmart files hundreds of patents every year and a lot of its patents never go beyond the planning stage. So it is unclear at the moment how serious the company is about its robotic bees.  In a statement to USA Today, Walmart stated that it is thinking about innovative ways to help improve how customers are served. However, they did not share any more information about the patent.