Spelling Bees? No, But They Can Read

I was in Northfield a couple of weeks ago. While waiting to be seated at a restaurant I discovered this fascinating story in Good Times, the area’s local free paper. The story is about how Bushel Boy taught bees to “read”…

Bushel Boy grows a very tasty tomato (2nd in quality only to Bogus Gold Brand tomatoes), and if you live in Minnesota, odds are you’ve experienced them. To increase yields, Bushel Boy lengthened the amount of time their plants are under artificial lighting. To produce fruit, the plants need bees to pollinate the blossoms. The plants grew at a faster pace, but there was a problem with the bees.

The yellow spectrum light was similar to daylight, so the bees had no problem going out to seek food, but bumble bees don’t see well enough to find their way back to their hive until light is in the blue spectrum similar to dusk. The bees were spending too much time wandering and not enough time in productive pollination. Bushel Boy estimated that it would have to invest in twice as many bees, so they looked for another solution.

A Bushel Boy scientist was familiar with some research a Dutch entomologist conducted on bee vision. The Dutch scientist found that bees can recognize bold rudimentary symbols. Bushel Boy brought this idea back to Owatonna.

A unique symbol was placed on each hive (it takes many hives for one greenhouse). Identical symbols were placed throughout the greenhouse. The bees now go out into the greenhouse, gather pollen and follow the symbols for their specific hive like a trail of bread crumbs back home. The time bees spend getting back to their hive has dropped, thus increasing the time they spend pollinating the blossoms.

In terms of productivity, the American economy is tops in the world. It is ingenuity like that used by Bushel Boy of Owatonna that keeps American productivity on the rise. Even the bumble bees are chipping in.