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

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

#111

Post by kaitai »

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.

tptacek has a very efficient guide to bees posted. Another nice national one that is very comprehensive is the USDA's guide at http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb530646... . Scroll to page 17 or so to start looking at illustrations of particular bees if you don't want to read about their habits. But the best for CA is the Berkeley Bee Lab's page on native bees at http://www.helpabee.org/common-bee-groups-of-ca.html

There was a great art & education & science installation on native bees at the UC Botanical Garden in Berkeley a few years back (http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Shirley-Watts-Mo...). I know they still have a beehive, and they might have some exhibits on native bees.

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

#112

Post by mpdehaan2 »

marknutter wrote: post #68
maratd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... to what was in fact a reasonable question. There was no question. It was a statement. > Yours is a needlessly inflammatory response ... I'm sorry, but what word would you use to describe the theory that selective pressures that decimate a population will eventually result in a superior specimen? It may be inflammatory, but that's the only word that came to mind.

How about "genetic engineering".

Natural selection.

See also "unnatural selection" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIeYPHCJ1B8

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

#113

Post by terminado »

So, we're "buying" new bees to offset the bees that die?

Uh... forgive me if I seem a little dense here but... where the hell are these store-bought bees coming from then? The moon? If the mass hysteria of CCD continues unabated, does that mean that bees WON'T go extinct because we can simply "buy" more bees from God at the God® store?

Are we back in the 1800's when spontaneous generation still held some ostensible sway over mother nature? Do they spontaneously materialize and transmogrify from some other form of matter? Do flowers transform into bees because the two are actually the same?

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

#114

Post by bjelkeman-again »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #94
floatrock wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would we need to address neonicotinoids at all? Unintended consequences of large-scale ecological engineering perhaps. Sure, commercial beekeepers can increase prices and the neonicotinoid users can accept it as an indirect cost of their choice of pesticide, but what about the large chunk of the ecosystem you're engineering which is not directly tied into commercial interests, but on which we still depend? Seem…

One of the shortcomings of "free market systems" is they historically fail at pricing ecological consequences... look at the fight around putting a cost onto carbon emissions. Actually, this isn't a shortcoming of the market as such. It's a failure in conjunction of our incomplete recognition of private property rights. By preventing certain types of property from having private ownership, we don't allow the market t…

So are you saying that the solution to externalisation of damage to the environment by a corporate entity is to have other corporate entities own everything? All the air, all the sea, all the rivers etc?

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

#115

Post by schiffern »

tptacek wrote: post #38
floatrock wrote: post #31

There's a little bit of dodging going around in this article... What's really going on is we still have a high amount of churn in the funnel, we're just spending more to hide it. > "The 2014 numbers, which came out earlier this year, show that the number of managed colonies -- that is, commercial honey-producing bee colonies managed by human beekeepers -- is now the highest it's been in 20 years." So the absolute num…

You're referring to neonicotinoids. Let's stipulate that neonicotinoids are in fact the root cause of CCD, which is defined as the increase in overwintering colony losses. Honey bees are a livestock animal, tied directly to agriculture. Neonicotinoids are popular in part because they're a narrow spectrum pesticide targeted at insect biology, and have fewer ill effects on other mammals than other pesticides. Here's th…

>if neonicotinoids are a net win for agriculture

The logic here seems to be that:

* Farmers buy neonicotinoids.

* Therefore, neonicotinoids have a net positive effect on agriculture.

(in other words, like a good libertarian you are assuming that the market has complete/perfect/accurate information)

Unfortunately that's just not true. Today's farmers simply don't have the required soil science/botany/ecology/hydrology knowledge. Worst, they are actively misled by biocide and fertilizer salesmen, who have a natural profit motive to convince farmers that their products are essential.

Far from being essential, in reality pesticides destroy the nutrient harvesting ability of healthy soil. Soil microbiologist Dr. Elaine Ingham explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag

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

#116

Post by CWuestefeld »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #114
CWuestefeld wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the shortcomings of "free market systems" is they historically fail at pricing ecological consequences... look at the fight around putting a cost onto carbon emissions. Actually, this isn't a shortcoming of the market as such. It's a failure in conjunction of our incomplete recognition of private property rights. By preventing certain types of property from having private ownership, we don't allow the market t…

So are you saying that the solution to externalisation of damage to the environment by a corporate entity is to have other corporate entities own everything? All the air, all the sea, all the rivers etc?

It's certainly one possible solution. This isn't just my idle speculation; see Coase Theorem [1] in economics:

The theorem states that if trade in an externality is possible and there are sufficiently low transaction costs, bargaining will lead to an efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property.

In the interest of intellectual honesty, I should go on to quote:

In practice, obstacles to bargaining or poorly defined property rights can prevent Coasian bargaining. ... Coase argued that real-world transaction costs are rarely low enough to allow for efficient bargaining and hence the theorem is almost always inapplicable to economic reality. Since then, others have demonstrated the importance of the perfect information assumption and shown using game theory that inefficient outcomes are to be expected when this assumption is not met.

That being said, it should be equally clear that the failures of public choice [2] are also legion, and in the example of pollution, it's clear that the regulatory system has bungled quite a lot of it, so it's far from obvious that the private ownership approach would be any worse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

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

#117

Post by tptacek »

schiffern wrote: post #115
tptacek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're referring to neonicotinoids. Let's stipulate that neonicotinoids are in fact the root cause of CCD, which is defined as the increase in overwintering colony losses. Honey bees are a livestock animal, tied directly to agriculture. Neonicotinoids are popular in part because they're a narrow spectrum pesticide targeted at insect biology, and have fewer ill effects on other mammals than other pesticides. Here's th…

>if neonicotinoids are a net win for agriculture The logic here seems to be that: * Farmers buy neonicotinoids. * Therefore, neonicotinoids have a net positive effect on agriculture. (in other words, like a good libertarian you are assuming that the market has complete/perfect/accurate information) Unfortunately that's just not true. Today's farmers simply don't have the required soil science/botany/ecology/hydrology…

I would appreciate it if you would not call me a libertarian, as I am not one of those, and you couldn't possibly know anyways. This mistake --- the fundamental attribution effect --- causes more bullshit misunderstandings on HN than anything except for perhaps the is-ought fallacy.

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

#118

Post by tptacek »

maratd wrote: post #62
tptacek wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yours is a needlessly inflammatory response to what was in fact a reasonable question. Eugenics is a philosophy that suggests human breeding should be controlled to select for favored features. It's disfavored for a variety of obvious reasons that connect to our principals about the unique value of human life. Honey bees are livestock. Livestock has been selectively bred for millennia, and discussions of long-term ge…

> ... to what was in fact a reasonable question. There was no question. It was a statement. > Yours is a needlessly inflammatory response ... I'm sorry, but what word would you use to describe the theory that selective pressures that decimate a population will eventually result in a superior specimen? It may be inflammatory, but that's the only word that came to mind.

You've mistakenly abused a very inflammatory word. I understand how it happened: eugenics sounded like a generally descriptive term about selective breeding; it is not: it's a philosophy about the genetic superiority and inferiority of different human beings.

It's no big deal. Helpful tip for future reference: avoid calling people eugenicists.

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

#119

Post by semi-extrinsic »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #43
tptacek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're referring to neonicotinoids. Let's stipulate that neonicotinoids are in fact the root cause of CCD, which is defined as the increase in overwintering colony losses. Honey bees are a livestock animal, tied directly to agriculture. Neonicotinoids are popular in part because they're a narrow spectrum pesticide targeted at insect biology, and have fewer ill effects on other mammals than other pesticides. Here's th…

> Here's the question: if neonicotinoids are a net win for agriculture, and CCD can be mitigated by more aggressive colony generation strategies, why would we need to address neonicotinoids at all? The market seems to have already done that. I'm concerned that we haven't proven yet that we can properly mitigate CCD long term with aggressive colony generation strategies, at least not long term. We need more data.

Use of the three most common neonicotinoids has been severely restricted in the EU since 2013. If they can withstand the lobbying pressure from Bayer, who makes literally billions of dollars selling these, we'll hopefully have good data in a few years time.

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

#120

Post by tptacek »

tehchromic wrote: post #109
tptacek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're referring to neonicotinoids. Let's stipulate that neonicotinoids are in fact the root cause of CCD, which is defined as the increase in overwintering colony losses. Honey bees are a livestock animal, tied directly to agriculture. Neonicotinoids are popular in part because they're a narrow spectrum pesticide targeted at insect biology, and have fewer ill effects on other mammals than other pesticides. Here's th…

One thing we can stipulate is that the chemistry of our planet is changing rapidly as result of human industry. We might not be able to prove that fact with conclusive evidence before any fallible human court of law, or public opinion. But whether we do or not doesn't change the fact that big changes in planetary chemistry mark major extinction periods in our planetary past, and that we are messing with forces far be…

I will not stipulate that "the onus is on an the producers and beneficiaries of all the toxic mess of industry, to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that their profit isn't coming at a permanent cost to the full realization of planetary health and sustenance", because I don't even know what that means. The Precautionary Principle works well in some places and not in others. In this case: you're pretending that the policy you're advocating doesn't have an embedded tradeoff, but it does. If you use less neonicotinoid pesticide, which you're hyperfixated on because of what seems to be a BS media trend story about bees, you will use more of other pesticides (or, worse, more land, which destroys habitat for all animals) which may be more harmful in the aggregate.

Honey bees are not a natural part of our ecology. They are a livestock animal. Worrying about their population and the energy it takes to sustain them is a lot like worrying about the population of dairy cows.

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