U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
washingtonpost.com
U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
1–10 of 194 posts
Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
#2So the solution is to... buy more bees of the internet? Thank god we solved CCD
Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
#3According to the article, the number of colonies is bigger than before because bee keepers simply buy more bees as replacement, but it doesn't explain where they come from.
Also: "put half the bees into a new beehive, order them a new queen online (retail price: $25 or so), and voila: two healthy hives."
Does that mean you have 100% more colonies but the same number of bees? I suppose not, but I think it would be interesting if we could see the evolution of the numbers of bees instead of the number of colonies.
Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
#4So the solution is to... buy more bees of the internet? Thank god we solved CCD
CCD is an economic problem. The varroa mite wiped out feral North American honey bees --- which are not native to North America --- a long time ago. Supposedly, any honey bee you've seen in the wild for the past decade has been part of a proprietary hive.
So, ordering more honey bee queens off the Internet seems to be a pretty reasonable response to the problem of a 10-20% increase in overwintering hive failures.
Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
#5Life finds a way. I think in some ways, CCD has probably "pruned" the bee population in a good way. Beekeeping allowed weaker hives that would have normally died off in the wild to continue to spawn new hives. CCD has reversed that trend, and may have improved the overall strength of the bee population genetics.
Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
#6According to the article, the number of colonies is bigger than before because bee keepers simply buy more bees as replacement, but it doesn't explain where they come from. Also: "put half the bees into a new beehive, order them a new queen online (retail price: $25 or so), and voila: two healthy hives." Does that mean you have 100% more colonies but the same number of bees? I suppose not, but I think it would be int…
A small number of bees when placed with a queen will quickly produce a full size hive. Bee hives have a size limit, so dividing them into two smaller hives produces rapid population growth. A queen bee can lay 1000 eggs a day.
Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
#7Why was this downvoted? Does CCD selection pressure help or hinder bee genetics?
Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
#8According to the article, the number of colonies is bigger than before because bee keepers simply buy more bees as replacement, but it doesn't explain where they come from. Also: "put half the bees into a new beehive, order them a new queen online (retail price: $25 or so), and voila: two healthy hives." Does that mean you have 100% more colonies but the same number of bees? I suppose not, but I think it would be int…
> but it doesn't explain where they come from.
Sure it does. They come from the Internet, it explicitly stated that.
Joking aside, from my understanding, the issue with bees is a combination of multiple factors, such as pesticides, disease, parasites, etc.
Those are primarily local issues. So it's perfectly feasible to find some isolated spot in the US, grow a ton of bees, and ship them across the country to wherever they are needed to make up for any local losses.
We can easily engineer around this issue, by increasing the bee population, genetically engineering them to be more resistant, wipe out parasites, or change the formulation of pesticides. It seems the market is responding by simply growing more bees to make up for the losses, which should be a viable solution in the short-term.
Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
#9Why was this downvoted? Does CCD selection pressure help or hinder bee genetics?
Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
#10So the solution is to... buy more bees of the internet? Thank god we solved CCD
CCD is an economic problem. The varroa mite wiped out feral North American honey bees --- which are not native to North America --- a long time ago. Supposedly, any honey bee you've seen in the wild for the past decade has been part of a proprietary hive. So, ordering more honey bee queens off the Internet seems to be a pretty reasonable response to the problem of a 10-20% increase in overwintering hive failures.
What would a non-native honey bee in the wild look like? I live in California and the bees in my garden and in the local parks are various. Some look like bumblebees and some look like just bees but I don't know bees from bees.