[projekktor id=’24371′]

A Mississauga company has come up with a unique way to protect crops from disease. Bee vectoring technologies, uses bumble bees to deliver their product throughout the crops. At full capacity four boxes could house up to 1200 bumble bees and the bees will do what they do best, pollinate.

When the bees leave the boxes they are covered in a white powder called BVT-CR7 which was developed by Bee Vectoring Technologies out of Mississauga. Todd Mason says,”This is a fully biological product that is organic product, no chemical, it’s found naturally in soils in North America, it’s a natural fungus.” When the bees pollinate they’ll also be delivering the powder to plants which protects them from diseases like Petritus.

This organic berry farm in Markham is testing it out. While it does nothing to fight weeds, BVT-CR7 will limit the amount of other products farmers need to put on their crops. “It’s a reduction 1 in chemicals, this farmer is organic, so he has limited number of products to use in disease control, the other advantage is fungicides slow the plant every time you spray them so you don’t have that slowdown effect,” says Todd Mason. The company says similar tests in the US have produced healthier crops, and up to 45% higher yields.

Bee Vectoring Technologies is still waiting for federal approval.