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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

#161

Post by staticint »

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…

> I believe that CCD has basically been conclusively traced to a certain class of pesticides.

However, the initial data on bee deaths following the use of dust-off mitigation strategies, like using Fluency Agent, looks promising. Granted, it is still early days to be forming any formal concluions, but the data that is available shows a significant change. Even if we can point to neonicotinoids as the cause, where do we go from here if changing our handling strategies resolves the problem?

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

#162

Post by pbreit »

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…

In other words, we've adapted?

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

#163

Post by chrishynes »

tehchromic wrote: post #147
bmelton wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"PRIOR to deciding that one toxic chemical really ought to be used in place of ten others" Points 1 and 2 from "5 Simple Chemistry Facts That Everyone Should Understand Before Talking About Science[1]" apply here. 1) Everything is made of chemicals, and 2) There is no such thing as a toxic chemical, there are only toxic doses. Let me say that again: all chemicals are safe at a low enough dose, and all chemicals are t…

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…

But you destroy your own point. Everyone on earth is exposed to "doses of radiation" every single second. It's just a small enough amount of radiation as to be benign.

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

#164

Post by jessaustin »

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…

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?

Is it relevant that honeybees are not native to North America, and can't pollinate many native American plants?

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

#165

Post by dmritard96 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #92

Nice to see the other side of the story for a change. While the 'extinction threat -> loss of all pollinated food -> disaster' narrative gets a lot of fear views, if we actively assist honey bee colonies in growing on a large scale we can replace a lot of bees quickly.

This 'other side of the story' is incomplete. Sure commercial outfits will just pay more and buy more honeybees, but nature won't.

Given that the entire problem is being caused by a dragnet insect poison, it would seem the wiser approach would be to find an alternative or improvement to the poison in its current form.

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

#167

Post by dayaz36 »

_delirium wrote: post #83
dayaz36 wrote: post #81

A comment from a real bee farmer on the article: " Mr Ingraham---do not assume you can read a few papers on CCD and bees and make cogent, authoritative remarks in a newspaper piece----this piece fails miserably. I AM a beekeeper, in Los Angeles, using feral honey bees, making public presentations, teaching beekeeping and selling honey. I am going to fill in your ignorance here with a few salient points. Making splits…

There's already a sub-thread about this in the comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10024292

I know. I wanted to make it more visible.

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

#169

Post by dejv »

Keyframe wrote: post #80
nonameface wrote: post #30

Buying more and more bees is a very expensive solution. Perhaps I'm just a poor beekeeper (maybe true?) but I would have to sell my honey at untenable prices if I was looking to make money on my beekeeping. For example, I've spent $1600 on bees and equipment, I've harvested 3 gallons of honey. I would have to sell that honey at $44/Pound to break even. Now hopefully over the long term this goes down a lot as the upfr…

I know next to nothing about this, but I have a question. Couldn't you make more hives yourself? What prevents you to 'cultivate' (or whatever it's called) queens and let them mate?

Yes, bees create new hives by themselves. Every year there are couple of swarming that include young queen leaving the hive to build new colony. In traditional beekeeping, the owner will catch the swarm, put it to new home and you've got another hive, which you either sell or use for more produce.

The problem is that a lot of hives die during winter (because of various form of illness and conditions) and the population couldn't sustain themselves.

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

#170

Post by dejv »

rpenm wrote: post #66

Interestingly, European bees hybridized with African bees seem to be quite resistant to CCD. Makes me wonder if one of the problems afflicting American honeybees is a lack of genetic diversity.

Well there are other factors in this debate. European-African hybrids are much more aggressive to the beekeeper and there are different conditions that kills the colony. Another factor is the honey production rates for these hybrids.

There are many different species of bees in use, with different characteristic in areas of amount of honey produced, aggression, tendency to get different forms of illness and so forth.

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