Flying doctors
The use of bees to deliver biological control to the flowers is a technique is known as "Entomovectoring".
In order to get bees to deliver the control agent, a specially designed dispenser (Aasatek) has been fitted in front of the hive. The dispenser guides the bees to walk through the control agent on their way out (red arrow in the photo below). The drawer is fitted so that the bees will enter the hive through the top of the drawer (blue arrow in the photo below), and are less likely to bring the powder back into the hive.
The Trichoderma powder mixture is spread on the velcro tray of the dispenser (as seen below). The bees pick up the control agent between their body hairs while they walk through the velcro, and distribute to flowers during flower visit.
The flying doctors technology is used successfully in Europe to control strawberry grey mould. This technology is now being tested in cherry orchards in South Australia for the first time by our team.