Lamborghini uses bees to check air pollution at its factory

Lamborghini uses bees to check air pollution at its factory

Since 2017, the United Nations declares that May 20 is World Bee Day, as a way to remember the insect that lives the risk of having some species extinct due to the human impact on the environment. A year earlier, in 2016, aLamborghinialready created an environmental monitoring program for research and care with bees, which aims to monitor low air pollution levels at its plant, located in Sant’Agata Bolognese, in the province of Bologna, Italy.

The action started with the installation of an apiary inside the automaker's complex, which had eight hives. Over time and project development, the researchers started to work with 12, that today have about 600 thousand bees, and 120 thousand of them of sociable species, that can go further from the colony to pollinate the environment.

It is from this “tour” of the bees that it is possible to collect data that help scientists in collaboration with Lamborghini to analyze the impact of the air pollution generated by the factory up to a radius of 3 km.

Work begins on honey collection, wax and even some bees for analysis. From the evaluation of these components, biologists specializing inbeekeepingcan detect how far polluting substances into the environment like pesticides, heavy metals, aromatic compounds, dioxides, among others, can propagate through the air.

These data are used to check the degree to which the polluting gases released by the Italian automaker's plant are harmful to the surroundings of the Lamborghini car park..

Recently, this environmental monitoring program increased its research field by analyzing not only the bee species that come out of the hive, but also the ones that are inside it.

Lonely calls, these species have a pollination radius and search for nectar from just 200 meters, this characteristic being taken into account and enhanced by the researchers. By allocating them in small houses made of reeds, also within the complex in Sant’Agata Bolognese, it was possible to check the air quality in more specific areas and collect even more accurate data about certain areas of the factory.

Like this, Lamborghini manages to have control over the levels of polluting gases in the air that its plant produces and uses this resource to its advantage to meet environmental preservation measures.

Source: AutoSport