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U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

washingtonpost.com

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Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#11

Post by antidaily »

maratd wrote: post #8
pingou wrote: post #3

According 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…

It's mostly pesticides.

Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#12

Post by tptacek »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #10
tptacek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here's a good starting point:

http://www.pollinator.org/PDFs/MontanaBeeGuide-Final.pdf

Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#13

Post by recusancy »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #10
tptacek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would look like a honeybee https://www.google.com/search?q=honey+bee&safe=off&espv=2&bi...

A lot of what you're seeing are probably wasps (the yellow jacket being one variety).

Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#14

Post by maratd »

c-slice wrote: post #5

Life 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.

> CCD has probably "pruned" the bee population in a good way

A reduction in the population is never a good thing. Is this some sort of neo-eugenics viewpoint? Pruning the population will not create some sort of super-bee. That's not how it works.

It will enhance whatever qualities are being selected for, but it will reduce the genetic diversity in the population, making it vulnerable to a hole raft of new diseases and disorders.

Ideally what you want is for the genetic variant that protects against a specific disease to be already within the population and for that variant to simply spread, without any population loss. If you're losing population, that is a BAD thing. That means things are happening too quickly and you're in for a world of hurt in the long-term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#15

Post by tlarimer »

stephengillie wrote: post #9
ZeroFries wrote: post #7

Why 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. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Even when it is paired with a question asking for clarification on the subject matter at hand?

Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#17

Post by dang »

tlarimer wrote: post #15
stephengillie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Even when it is paired with a question asking for clarification on the subject matter at hand?

Yes, because you can always delete the downvote noise and keep the clarifying question.

Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#18

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #4
orf wrote: post #2

So 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.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#19

Post by dang »

[deleted] wrote: post #16
stephengillie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[deleted]

Except it was decisively upvoted, not downvoted, in the end. It's pointless to ask why there was a bit of downage in the vote stream. Maybe someone misclicked. Maybe someone was mistaken. Most of these cases sort themselves out rather quickly; meanwhile a comment about it sticks around inaccurately forever.

Re: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

#20

Post by [deleted] »

tlarimer wrote: post #15
stephengillie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Even when it is paired with a question asking for clarification on the subject matter at hand?

[deleted]
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