Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine
washingtonpost.com
Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine
1–10 of 33 posts
Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine
#2Bee colonies is a somewhat optimistic number. US honey production is a more dramatic drop from 2000. http://www.capitalpress.com/Nation_World/Nation/20150325/us-... even though that chart looks almost flat from 2000 - 2016
Also of note, this is not in a vacuum the EPA has been active over the last few years. https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/epa-actions-protec...
Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine
#3Uh, I thought it was the wild bees that we were concerned about.
And from the article about wild bees:
"Of course, the discussion above concerns only commercial bees that are managed by humans and businesses. Wild bees — whether they're honeybees or one of our 4,000 other native bee species — face different difficulties. If those species suffer die-offs, there's nobody around to breed new queens and help them recover. Wild bees are on their own.
Recent research has shown that the use of certain insecticides called neonicotinoids has been linked to declines in wild bee populations. But assessing the true magnitude of the effect is difficult, because it's a lot harder to survey wild bee populations than domesticated ones."
So basically, move along, bit of a nothing article.
Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine
#4I don't understand the purpose of this article. The headline seems to be pushing the message "relax, forget about it, everything's fine". The content of the article is much more ambiguous.
It starts by saying a Hawaiian bee has been added to the endangered list, follows by explaining the effects of colony collapse disorder: little change in commercial bee numbers, harsh economic times for beekeepers, unmeasured and likely dire change for wild bees.
There is no conclusion to the article, but the bees do not appear to be "doing just fine"...
Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine
#5I'm no expert but surveying the number of kept hives doesn't tell you anything about the health of those hives or the total number of living bees.
If colonies are indeed collapsing, beekeepers may need to start more hives to deal with greater attrition rates.
Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine
#6That's an infuriating headline.
The upshot of the article is, the bees that were recently in the news for newly being endangered are a small number of species in a geographically confined area.
The commercially-important bees that are important for pollination are not endangered, and while mortality for these bees remains anomalously high due to colony collapse disorder, available stocks remain high because beekeepers have largely compensated for the additional mortality with larger investments in breeding additional queens and splitting of hives. This effort is reflected in the cost of honey, which has doubled since 2006, and the cost of commercial pollination services, which has also risen.
I suppose it's a useful description of the scope of the new "endangered" status, but to my mind, there's a pretty big difference between "the bees are doing just fine" and "commercially important bee populations remain stable because the economic burden of colony collapse disorder has been passed on to consumers of bee services".
Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine
#7That's an infuriating headline. The upshot of the article is, the bees that were recently in the news for newly being endangered are a small number of species in a geographically confined area. The commercially-important bees that are important for pollination are not endangered, and while mortality for these bees remains anomalously high due to colony collapse disorder, available stocks remain high because beekeeper…
Another day, another rung down the ladder of journalistic quality from the WaPo.
Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine
#8As with so many of WaPo's articles lately, I'm at a loss as to whether this is clumsy propaganda, or just incredibly inept reporting.
Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine
#9That's an infuriating headline. The upshot of the article is, the bees that were recently in the news for newly being endangered are a small number of species in a geographically confined area. The commercially-important bees that are important for pollination are not endangered, and while mortality for these bees remains anomalously high due to colony collapse disorder, available stocks remain high because beekeeper…
Agreed, annoying headline. I was ready to write some angry rant in response, but at least the article actually does address (unlike the last time this same article was written) the economic realities of constantly treading water to keep your bee population up.
Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine
#10I'm no expert but surveying the number of kept hives doesn't tell you anything about the health of those hives or the total number of living bees. If colonies are indeed collapsing, beekeepers may need to start more hives to deal with greater attrition rates.
The article does address this fact, though the headline writer chose to omit any such subtlety.