U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by schiffern » Sat, Aug 08, 2015, 12:13 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #148

schiffern wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then please, correct me! How did you come to the conclusion that neonicotinoids have an overall net positive effect on agriculture?

Because the alternatives to neonicotinoids are broader-spectrum pesticides that affect other kinds of animal life, including mammals, as I've said repeatedly on the thread. I don't know why you insist on being so overtly hostile, but whatever the reason, let me promise that it doesn't make you more persuasive.

>Because the alternatives to neonicotinoids are broader-spectrum pesticides

Well 'ere's yer problem! ;)

You're starting off by assuming that agriculture must use pesticides to grow food. But is that really true?

I submit to you that it is not. Furthermore, I submit that a food system that depends on pesticides is doomed to self-destruct (because of inevitable biogeophysical processes). Pesticides destroy the nutrient cycling microorganisms in the soil leading to infertility, erosion, and ultimately desertification. Again, soil microbiologist Elaine Ingham explains the process better than I could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag

>I don't know why you insist on being so overtly hostile

You're right. My apologies, and edited.

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

#152

Post by lisper » Sat, Aug 08, 2015, 12:31 AM UTC

politician wrote: post #108

lisper wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we had some private entity or entities that were recognized as the owners of air or water I volunteer to be that entity.

I can't upvote you. Bravo.

Thanks, but why can't you upvote me?

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

#153

Post by maratd » Sat, Aug 08, 2015, 12:52 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #118

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.

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.

You have again failed to offer an alternative.

If you are incapable of it, then eugenics was the right word to use, regardless of your sensibilities. It was not my intention to offend, but to accurately identify. If you have a better word for it, I would certainly like to hear it.

Again: What word would you use to describe the theory that selective pressures that decimate a population will eventually result in a superior specimen?

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

#154

Post by schiffern » Sat, Aug 08, 2015, 1:03 AM UTC

eric_h wrote: post #107

chrissnell wrote: post #65

I'm not so sure. I have a large backyard garden and I'm surrounded by neighbors who also garden. I was chatting with some of them the other day and we've all noticed a significant drop in fertilization amongst our plants this year. My tomato plants are typically overloaded with fruit by this time of year but now only have four or five tomatoes each. Same story with the tomatillos, the squashes, the cukes and the wate…

Sounds like you need to fashion a bee stick [1] so you can do the pollination yourself. We used these in a high school science project to pollinate fast plants. [1] http://www.fastplants.org/how_to_grow/pollinating.php

Even easier: plant wildflowers to feed and attract pollinators. Borage is a good one (and it repels bunnies too), or just find a good native wildflower mix.

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

#155

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast » Sat, Aug 08, 2015, 1:32 AM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #89

abakker wrote: post #48

From Wikipedia: The pollination of California's almonds is the largest annual managed pollination event in the world, with close to one million hives (nearly half of all beehives in the USA) being trucked in February to the almond groves. Much of the pollination is managed by pollination brokers, who contract with migratory beekeepers from at least 49 states for the event. This business has been heavily affected by c…

Wow. 49 states implies that at least one of Alaska or Hawaii is involved.

Why would you be surprised that they grow things in Hawaii. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_B._Dole

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

#156

Post by tjradcliffe » Sat, Aug 08, 2015, 1:46 AM UTC

bmelton wrote: post #150

tehchromic wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is duplicitous! :} If you and I are responsible for a man who is exposed to doses of radiation everyday and I stand up and say, you know, we shouldn't have this guy exposed to radiation because it could be lethal, and you say, hoooold on, there's no such thing as lethal radiation, just lethal doses of radiation ... then I gotta wonder who you are working for! Because both our points are that you gotta kn…

I disagree. The point isn't that no research should be done, but that nothing is safe. Your point was "So we can also 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." That is an impossible task. Water is not safe. Oxygen…

Oxygen is not flammable (neither is fluorine... every other element is, in the sense that it forms stable compounds in exothermic reactions with oxygen.)

Oxygen is, however, fairly toxic (2 atmospheres partial pressure starts to get pretty dangerous after relatively short times.)

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

#157

Post by bmelton » Sat, Aug 08, 2015, 1:51 AM UTC

tjradcliffe wrote: post #156

bmelton wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The point isn't that no research should be done, but that nothing is safe. Your point was "So we can also 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." That is an impossible task. Water is not safe. Oxygen…

Oxygen is not flammable (neither is fluorine... every other element is, in the sense that it forms stable compounds in exothermic reactions with oxygen.) Oxygen is, however, fairly toxic (2 atmospheres partial pressure starts to get pretty dangerous after relatively short times.)

You are indeed correct, and had I taken more care, I would have stated that oxygen encourages flammability... which is still not entirely correct, but closer.

Thank you for the correction.

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

#158

Post by zevyoura » Sat, Aug 08, 2015, 2:36 AM UTC

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #155

tedunangst wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. 49 states implies that at least one of Alaska or Hawaii is involved.

Why would you be surprised that they grow things in Hawaii. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_B._Dole

The surprising part is that they're shipping live bees back and forth overseas.

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

#159

Post by schiffern » Sat, Aug 08, 2015, 2:43 AM UTC

floatrock wrote: post #84

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…

> 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…

>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?

Going even further, what about the side-effects on the very same field?

Pesticides kill insects, but they kill both beneficial (pest eating) and pestilent insects. The problem is the bad guys can bounce back faster - picture the deer population vs. wolf population. This means that, paradoxically, the use of pesticides now leads to a greater need for pesticides later.

The solution is to step back, recognize this negative feedback loop, and address the root causes of pest invasion: dead soil and loss of biodiversity. This is where techniques like cover cropping, interplanting, and inoculating with compost (soil microorganisms) come in.

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

http://extension.illinois.edu/soil/SoilBiology/soil_food_web...

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

#160

Post by slavik81 » Sat, Aug 08, 2015, 2:45 AM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #95

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…

Moreover, the article entirely ignores wild bees. That's somewhat understandable as they're not as well studied, but they're a significant pollination force nevertheless -- according to this White House fact sheet [1], wild bees accounted for $9 billion of the economic benefit of pollination (compared to $15 billion for domesticated bees). The wild bees are not being replaced. This article really does have a lot of d…

Shamelessly plugging a related project, I recently contributed to a game [1] designed to illustrate that wild bee populations have economic value. Jana Vamosi, a biologist from the University of Calgary, submitted the project idea to the Mozilla Science Lab [2] to get help building it. There's a lot of room for improvement, actually, if anyone wants to lend a hand.

[1] http://www.diversibee.org

[2] https://www.mozillascience.org/projects/diversibee