Speculative Design: The Bee Reimagined
If you had the ability to change anything about the bee, what would you do?
When posed with the question above, my mind became flooded with ideas. The freedom to design with no limits on creativity was invigorating, and not something I am necessarily used to in my Biomedical Engineering coursework. My teammates and I began brainstorming on ways we could alter the bee to address some of the problems we have learned about in class. Below are two images of our white board sessions.
Our ideas had narrowed down to three main alterations: adding armor to the bee's thorax and abdomen, reinforcing the wing structure/implementing a regenerative wing, and adding a Jacobsen organ between the bee's eyes. The intended effects of the armor are to deter Varroa mites and protect the bee from their parasitic harm. The reinforced and regenerative wings are designed to prevent the weakened wing disease that can occur when mites attach. Finally, the Jacobsen organ is implemented in our ideal bee to act as a pesticide sensor so that the bees can avoid pesticides when retrieving pollen for the hive. Interestingly enough, all of our bee modifications are inspired by characteristics already seen in nature. For instance, the protective armor is reminiscent of a beetle's hard shell and lobster's articulated exterior. The regenerative wing design is similar to a shark's ability to replace their teeth, or a lizard's ability to regenerate a tail. The Jacobsen organ is present in many snakes, enhancing their sense of smell. Collecting our ideas, we began work on the lo fidelity prototype of our ideal bee. We used construction paper to mold the body and Jacobsen organ, plastic sheet for the wings, pipe cleaners for the wing reinforcement and legs, and pieces of plastic bowls to shape the armor. Below are some images of that process.
After sharing our lo fidelity prototype with the class, we were ready to begin the final iteration of our ideal bee. To do this we utilized a few tools offered in the 1819 Innovation Hub's Makerspace, including the 3D printers and laser cutters. We modeled our ideal bee by 3D printing the body and armor, laser cutting the wings, reinforcing the wings with electrical wire, and using permanent marker to indicate the Jacobsen organ. We found it was helpful to print a small test print of the bee's body to ensure proper placement of supports and orientation before printing the larger, more time consuming, bee body. Our final iteration was a perfect implementation of the ideal bee characteristics we had imagined. Below are some pictures of the process from lo fidelity prototype to our final bee iteration.
We redesigned the bee -- now what? Upon deeper thinking and provoking conversation, my group soon uncovered the unintended consequences our "ideal" bee could have if truly implemented. Genetic modifications inspired by other species are something out of an "experiment gone wrong"-type sci-fi film, but only the beginning of this ideal bee's impact. The bee would require a longer brood time to develop more complex and larger anatomy, flight could be affected by the bee's heavier weight, honeybees would be more apt to out-compete native bee species, and most interestingly, this ideal honeybee would avoid crops treated with pesticides since it now has the ability to sense harmful pesticides with its Jacobsen organ. This has many implications for multiple stakeholders: farmers, consumers, and bees. Since we rely on bees to pollinate crops, their avoidance of pesticide-treated crops would be detrimental to the food industry . . . or would it? A shortage of food is not a problem the United States faces, rather the country is poor at distributing the large amount of crops that are produced. This results in almost half of food produced being wasted. So perhaps the unintended effect of this ideal bee on crops and farmers is not a vast shortage of food since pesticides would no longer be used, but instead an instigator of change in the way crops are grown and distributed. Maybe a negative solution is the most appropriate in this situation; a reconsideration of the value placed on crops and the corresponding compensation given to farmers for their produce to eliminate wasted crop. This could look something like government subsidies paying the same amount of money for a smaller amount of crops, providing the farmers with the extra energy and time necessary to grow pesticide-free produce that is able to be pollinated by bees. A solution to this issue could come in many forms, and definitely requires a lot more time and thought than available for this semester long course; however, it is exciting enough to speculate.
Click the following link to view my group's presentation slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TZi9OR4hhBLKX9NBKohunJl3Jc0DREjyGkCOfmown9U/edit?usp=sharing