Israeli Bees to Help Save Japanese Crops

Israeli bees are flying to the rescue in Japan in order to help pollinate their crops.

Israeli bumblebees are on the way to Japan to help make up for a lack of bees there caused by the increased use of pesticides in rice fields, Israel Hayom reports.

The Israeli bees are receiving “first class” treatment on their way to Japan and are being sent inside spacious hives, each of which contains an impregnated queen bee and 50 worker bees that supply her needs.

These special bees were raised and engineered by the Bio Bee firm, based at Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu in the Jordan Valley.

The bees will be deployed throughout Japan, where they will work busily to pollinate the produce, a process vital to ensure a good harvest, which in many instances cannot succeed without bees. As the bees suck up nectar from a flower, they shake it, which helps distribute the pollen.

Bio Bee’s mass-produced earth bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) are created for pollination purposes only. They have been uniquely bred to carry out their mission even when the temperature drops, as well as in rainy, cloudy weather, when bees do not naturally work and prefer to huddle up in their warm hives.

This method has been successfully used in Israel for years. Israeli farmers are also affected by the global decline in the honeybee population. The advantage of these particular bees is that they tend to stay inside the closed greenhouse, rather than flying out to cultivate other people’s fields.

There has been a general drop in the global bee population, but the situation in Japan is especially acute because of the pesticide spraying of rice crops there. Many bees died after they ingested the poisoned nectar.

By: United with Israel Staff