Will pollinator drones replace honeybees?

Have you heard this news?  Scientists in Japan have built a pollinator bot, a remote-controlled drone, that can go from flower to flower, brushing against the flower’s stamen with a horsehair paintbrush that’s covered in a sticky ionic liquid gel, both lifting off pollen from each flower as well as depositing some of that pollen on to the next.  It’s a little hard to “drive”, but put Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the driver's seat and this may be the future of pollination.
 
But, hold on, hold on…. Let’s pump the brakes for a second here, folks. Is it even feasible at this point that these drones could take over the role of the honeybee in the pollination process?

Breaking down the numbers

Almond Grove Estimates

• Avg. acreage:                  40 acres
• Trees / Acre:                    120 trees
• Total Trees:                    4,800 trees​

​Bee Estimates

• Hives / Acre:                       2 hives
• Frames / Hive:                    8 frames
• Bees / Frame:                     1,500 bees
• Bees / Hive:                        12,000 bees
• Foragers / Hive:                 4,000 bees
• Foraging Bees / Acre:      8,000 bees

Thanks to Joe Traynor's excellent analysis which inspired this post, we know about half of the foraging bees per acre (~4,000 bees) will be actively pollinating at one time. The other half will be back in the hive (or on their way back) to offload their pollen and fuel up for the next trip. 
 
The bees end up visiting each flower multiple times during their daily foraging period, from around 10:00am to 2:00pm. The extra trips to the flowers, dropping off extra pollen, stimulates the growth of the pollen grain that did end up pollinating the flower.
 
Each tree has about 20,000 flowers. With 40 bees to pollinate each tree at the rate of about 10 flowers per minute, they’ll be able to pollinate about 96,000 flowers during a work day.  Which equates to visiting each flower 4 to 5 times.

Comparing the costs

Bees

Hives / Acre	2 hives
Hives / Avg. Grove (40 Acres)	80 hives
​Cost / Hive	$180
Cost for 80 Hives	​$14,400
Time Spent Pollinating	21 days
Cost per Day	$686

Drone Equipment

Drone	$50
Horsehair brush	$10
Ionic gel	$20
Set-up labor (4 hrs @ $20/hr)	$80
Cost for 1 Drone	$160
Cost for 46 Drones	$7,360

Now, until AI can replace a manual operator, a remote-controlled drone needs a human to control it.  Let’s say a person controlling a drone is super focused and can pollinate 5 trees, lush with almond bloom, trying their best to get all the flowers nestled within the branches, in a day, at $15/hr.

Drone Deployment

Time spent pollinating ​(1 worker, 5 trees/day)	800 days
Time spent pollinating ​(46 workers, 5 trees/day)	21 days
Labor Cost ​(8 hours @ $15/hr)	$115,920
Total Cost	$123,280
Total Cost per Day	$5,870

Picking a winner

VS.

(we realize this lazy guy won't lift a finger to help his sisters with pollination)

To get the pollination job done in the same amount of time using drones, it would cost over $100,000--more than 8 times as much as the cost of renting bees!
 
So, beekeepers of the world, sit back and relax for now. When it comes to pollination, the honeybee is key!

About the author

Gretchen Riggs writes about insights discovered through analyzing data on bee health, hive production and environmental factors affecting bees.
Email Gretchen