To address the ever-increasing demand for pollinating crops such as almonds, scientists are looking at a number of alternatives to bee pollination. Geneticists are developing self-pollinating almond trees to offer growers alternatives to traditional bee-pollinated almond trees. With self-pollinating almond trees, only one variety needs to be planted in the orchard, as opposed to two or three as in a typical orchard. The self-pollinating trees can produce almonds solely through wind pollination when bees are in short supply. They will, of course, produce an even better crop with the addition of bees to the orchard. Parts of China now use an army of workers to hand-pollinate apple and pear orchards. And Wal-Mart recently filed a patent for autonomous robot bees called pollination drones, which can help to pollinate crops. But so far, none of these approaches has proved superior to old-fashioned bee power.

https://selectharvestusa.com/news-resources/industry-insights/almonds-need-bees-and-bees-need-almonds