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Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine

washingtonpost.com

11–20 of 33 posts

Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine

#12
post #4

I 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 l…

Authors for major news sites don't write their own headlines which is why there is often a disconnect with the actual content of the article.

Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine

#14
post #4

I 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 l…

Authors for major news sites don't write their own headlines which is why there is often a disconnect with the actual content of the article.

In this case, I get the sense the editor may have cut a fair bit of content as well as adding a contradictory title, from a possibly reasonably OK original draft.

Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine

#16
post #4

I 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 l…

Authors for major news sites don't write their own headlines which is why there is often a disconnect with the actual content of the article.

I see this comment a lot on poorly titled articles. My question, what job title is typically responsible for writing headlines?

Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine

#18
This seems a lot like Y2K syndrome -- Lots of experts working really hard to avert a crisis, and if/when they mostly succeed, it gives regular folks the impression that there wasn't much of an issue in the first place, and it was all overblown to begin with.

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"

Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine

#19
post #6

That'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…

I think the headline of this article should be considered in the context it's presented, namely the context where I've seen several variations on the same headline "Bees added to US endangered species list for the first time" shared dozens of times across social media. Personally, I find that headline to be much more infuriating than this articles.

Re: Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine

#20
post #6

That'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…

The bees that are used to pollinate crops and produce honey are livestock, and --- the central argument of the post --- there are more of them today than there were when the CCD phenomenon began.

The price of honey is a relevant counterargument, but demand for honey has also increased, and there are cyclical changes in honey bee output. In the middle of the time period we're talking about, there was also apparently a worldwide honey shortage that was tied primarily to poor crop production; honey is a global commodity, so that also impacts prices.

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