171–180 of 398 posts
Murder hornets are a real threat to honey bee hives. A handful of hornets can take out a hive of thousands. What's interesting is the way that honey bees defend against them. A bunch of bees surround each hornet, then they intensify the flapping of their wings, which then generates enough heat to kill the hornet. In other words, the hornets are cooked alive.
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It’s worth noting that the honeybee defense mechanism you describe is unique to Asian honeybees, which evolved this defense specifically because of the native Asian giant hornet / murder hornet. European honeybees, which are used in most of the world, have no such defense mechanism and would indeed be helplessly slaughtered by these hornets. I’d definitely advocate watching some YouTube footage about these creatures,…
Why don't we cross-breed European with Asian honeybees? Or just start using Asian honeybees?
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 (…
> You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. 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.
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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…
I don't know much about bees but I just recently started following an Instagram account (@texasbeeworks) that earlier this year posted a video[1] of a bee with a Varroa Mite. 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 watchin…
"If these hornets become a serious problem for honeybees, we will find a solution to keep bees safe."
It can easy be too late. Look at what's happening in Europe. They simply can't stop the hornets.
Of course it's more dramatic to show these huge insects. They are impressive and scary. Mites are small and look insignificant. They are not dramatic. They won't generate hype. I understand the frustration as a beekeeper, but don't let yet another problem become too big to reverse the tide on. It is obviously cheaper to deal with the hornets right now, hype or no hype.
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 (…
Capitalism doesn't know how to account for things that have no dollar signs attached. The only answer to anything in capitalism is: let's create a market for that. When you elevate capitalism to an ideology (which is what is happening for many people) instead of an economic tool that you need to use when necessary, then you lose focus of the real world outside markets.
It's not about socialism or capitalism here, scarce resources and humans need regulation
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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…
Have you heard that certain pseudoscorpions might be of help against varroa mites? They seem to hunt them and would need to live in the beekeeping box as I understand. 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 circ…
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 (…
Working towards reducing that reliance sounds like a better investment than hoping that a fragile system keeps stable if we undo the changes we noticed we cause (a system that had multiple extinction events in the past)
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 (…
FWIW honeybees are not part of the native US ecosystem, they were imported from europe. They are likely important if not critical to the pollination of several cash crops, but they're not an ecosystem concern in and of themselves.
However giant asian hornets are rather indiscriminate in their hunting, in fact their main prey in japan are large insects like mantises (as well as other hornets). GAH taking root in the US would be an unmitigated disaster all around, not just for beekeeping.
Murder hornets are a real threat to honey bee hives. A handful of hornets can take out a hive of thousands. What's interesting is the way that honey bees defend against them. A bunch of bees surround each hornet, then they intensify the flapping of their wings, which then generates enough heat to kill the hornet. In other words, the hornets are cooked alive.
Relevant Oatmeal comic: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/bees_vs_hornets
The honeybees don’t just swarm the hornets, they will actually retreat into the hive and allow the hornets to enter, then trap them inside while they roast them to death. All of this works because the honeybees can vibrate themselves to a temperature just warmer than the hornets can tolerate, which is also just less than the bees can tolerate. Just one or two degrees celsius of tolerance is the difference.
Hopefully no Asian giant hornets ever evolve a slightly higher temperature tolerance!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What will happen when bees go extinct? Edit: I don’t understand the vicious pointless downvotes over this question.
Is that a real risk? I thought it was pretty straightforward to breed more of them. For now. The colony collapse problem is real, but I haven't heard any serious discussion of honeybees going extinct.
In Europe it is..in fact it was the main-theme 3 years ago. And not just bees but insects overall...the honeybee was just the friendly looking ambassador for that message.