80% of crops require insect pollination, but growers can no longer rely on the biggest pollinators, with the population of wild bees dwindling (because of drought, climate change, mites, excessive use of agricultural chemicals & colony collapse disorder). In comes Israel-based BloomX (formerly Bumbelbee AI), which develops “bio-mimicking” pollination technology. Their platform pinpoints the optimal window for pollination & then sends crop-specific hardware devices to replicate the natural pollination process. Its 1st product “Robee” (focused on blueberries, with 1.8m plants pollinated already) uses mechanical arms mounted on an electric vehicle that vibrate the stems to release pollen grains on the flower’s stigma – said to increase yield by up to 55%: “years of research & testing have been conducted to calibrate the speed & strength of the vibration for optimal efficiency”. Its 2nd product “CrossBee” (focused on avocado, with 52,000 trees pollinated already) is an (electrostatically charged) “collector device” that “strokes” plants to release their pollen grains – said to increase yield by up to 30%. 827 acers are managed by both products. Founded in 2019 by Thai Sade (CEO), Ido Senesh (VP R&D) & Avi Keren (CTO), BloomX ~competes with several Israeli startups working on & with bees e.g. Beewise (robotic bee hives) (<€115m), BeeHero (robotic bee hives) (<€60m), ToBe (anti-varroa device) (€n.a.), BioBee (bio-based pest mgmt. solutions) (€n.a.) & Bee-io (colony-friendly honey harvesting) (<€2.5m). Further afield, researchers Hao Zeng & Jianfeng Yeng at Tampere University are trying to build “robotic bees” – “aero-bots that can fly by the power of wind & controlled by light (responsive material)”. <Source: techcrunch.com, nocamels.com>
