161–170 of 398 posts
I was curious about this and found this YouTube video. https://youtu.be/EZ1eAM8CChc 30,000 bees killed by just 30 hornets in an hour or so. The bees just have no defence against them at all. Brutal.
Also fascinating, a related video on bees killing a hornet: https://youtu.be/UNroEwFxh6I
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read a number of articles describing the stressors on bee colonies, but I'm interested in your take - what do you see as the primary factors affecting your colonies?
I live in place where winters are harsh. Colonies need to be well-prepared to successfully overwinter. They are amazingly robust when they are healthy, but anything that affects this preparation can easily be deadly over a period of time. There can be many reasons. The Varroa Mite [0] is one that we have to constantly fight against, these days. The mites don't kill the entire colony, but weakens it so much that the c…
Are things like the beetles and virus new introductions to the area, or is it just a confluence of factors that are hitting harder now?
I'd also heard (many years ago) that, while the colonies can collapse, the bees normally reproduce quickly enough that you don't see much of a net loss in colony counts year-over-year - how do you see that?
My impression is that the bee populations have been remarkably resilient year over year, but whenever I see this kind of stress-and-recovery cycle, I worry that there's a tipping point - many systems seem Fine under stress until they overwhelm their recovery mechanism and collapse catastrophically.
I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Saying "MEH, there are other pollinators" is lazy thinking. Our ecosystem is a vast web of interconnections. You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. Furthermore: People use honey bees for honey (…
I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Saying "MEH, there are other pollinators" is lazy thinking. Our ecosystem is a vast web of interconnections. You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. Furthermore: People use honey bees for honey (…
I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Saying "MEH, there are other pollinators" is lazy thinking. Our ecosystem is a vast web of interconnections. You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. Furthermore: People use honey bees for honey (…
Reminds me of an old adage I heard in high school: If you take the frogs out of the environment, you don't have the same environment minus frogs, you have an entirely new ecosystem.
I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Saying "MEH, there are other pollinators" is lazy thinking. Our ecosystem is a vast web of interconnections. You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. Furthermore: People use honey bees for honey (…
At risk of sounding like a prediction, we can confidently say the outcome is something awful. The ecosystem isn't built like a fault-tolerant network where one node goes out, but the network more or less still works. There is no redundancy. There are no enterprise-grade availability requirements.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’mfrom Alberta. My favorite party trick when talking to non-native Albertans is to pull up the “world rat population” map: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/657947826782505650/ I have no idea how accurate it is, of course.
That is astounding! For anyone on mobile who wants to avoid the Pinterest garbage, here's a direct link to the image: https://www.vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/rats-10...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read a number of articles describing the stressors on bee colonies, but I'm interested in your take - what do you see as the primary factors affecting your colonies?
I live in place where winters are harsh. Colonies need to be well-prepared to successfully overwinter. They are amazingly robust when they are healthy, but anything that affects this preparation can easily be deadly over a period of time. There can be many reasons. The Varroa Mite [0] is one that we have to constantly fight against, these days. The mites don't kill the entire colony, but weakens it so much that the c…
There is a tiny bit of information on them in german Wikipedia [0] (automatic translation [1], let me know if I can help with translation). Wikipedia says that they can be found worldwide, so maybe they will be of help.
(Please note that under _no circumstances_ this was meant as encouragement to introduce new invasive species to your area!)
Here is more information: the page of the beekeeper researching pseudoscorpions and bee interactions is at [2], [3] is about a book he wrote, called "Instruction manual for species-appropriate husbandry of bees and pseudoscorpions". A comment in [3] also suggests that under ideal circumstances, these pseudoscorpions might be able to deal with a small hive beetle.
This poster [4] states that having pseudoscorpions in hives unfortunately had no influence on varroa numbers, though.
[0] (german) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCcherskorpion
[1] (machine translation de-en): https://www.translatetheweb.com/?from=&to=en&dl=de&ref=trb&a...
[2] (german) https://beenature-project.com/epages/6aa71639-792d-4a95-9e8c...
[3] (german) https://bienen-nachrichten.de/2019/handlungsanleitung-f%C3%B...
[4] (PDF, english) http://apicultureconference2016.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/201...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read a number of articles describing the stressors on bee colonies, but I'm interested in your take - what do you see as the primary factors affecting your colonies?
I live in place where winters are harsh. Colonies need to be well-prepared to successfully overwinter. They are amazingly robust when they are healthy, but anything that affects this preparation can easily be deadly over a period of time. There can be many reasons. The Varroa Mite [0] is one that we have to constantly fight against, these days. The mites don't kill the entire colony, but weakens it so much that the c…
The video's caption:
"Alright, here is what I want everyone to know about ‘murder hornets’. Only one nest of Asian Giant Hornets has been found in North America and it was quickly eradicated. Right now, the nation’s top entomologists are watching the situation and beekeepers like myself are not worried. If these hornets become a serious problem for honeybees, we will find a solution to keep bees safe.
If you really want something to be afraid of and if you want to know what keeps beekeepers awake at night, look closely at the bee in this video. You’ll see a dark, round speck on the side of her body. That, my friends, is something far more terrifying than these so-called ‘murder hornets’—it is a Varroa Mite. (Scroll through to see it up close.) The Varroa Mite is a parasitic mite that feeds on the fat bodies of bees and its decimating bee populations around the world.
At this point in time, Varroa Mites are a much greater threat to honeybee populations than Asian Giant Hornets and if they got the same attention in the press, maybe we would have a solution for them. Everyone now knows the term ‘murder hornet’ but the thing we should be talking about In the US is the Varroa Mite, a creature whose scientific name is literally ‘Varroa Destructor’.
Please stop the murder hornet hype and please start talking about the thing that’s killing more honeybees in the US than anything else right now—varroa mites."
I’m a beekeeper and every passing year it becomes harder to keep my colonies alive. I’m really glad that we’re taking this threat seriously, because we don’t need one more problem on our list of things that kill our bees. While I’m at it, please allow me to remind everyone that there are thousands of solitary bee species in the world. They are the ones that go extinct or in real danger compared to our honey bees. The…
In addition, do what you can to support bees. Here are some simple suggestions from Nat Geo. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/05/150524-bees-...