As bees in the wild are struggling with a steep decline in numbers, Russian scientists offer robotic pollinators as a viable substitute.

American beekeepers have lost an estimated 40 percent of their managed honeybee colonies. According to the US Bee Informed Partnership, currently most farmers have to buy or rent bee colonies, which contributes to a rise in food prices.

Russian scientists at the Tomsk Polytechnic University now offer an alternative: robo-bees. Researchers plan to launch the project in 2019, and the size of the prototypes will be at least seven times bigger than real bees, which means that they’ll be the size of a human palm.

For greenhouse use only

According to Alexey Yakovlev, the head of TPU’s School of Engineering, artificial bees will be especially beneficial for strawberry and other plants that grow in greenhouses all year round. “We plan to develop the robo-bees, algorithms and software, as well as optical systems and image recognition methods for accurate positioning,” Yakovlev said. Dronebelow.com reports that creating the first batch of 100 flying robots will cost around $1.4 million.

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