181–190 of 398 posts
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What will happen when bees go extinct? Edit: I don’t understand the vicious pointless downvotes over this question.
Honey bees haven’t existed in America before 1600, so I suppose we’ll be without one of the invasive species.
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I'm actually somewhat upset about this in my city. The fire department is driving these gigantic fire engines with ladders and everything to every medical emergency, when just a small van would be totally fine.
Chesterton’s Fence: I grew up close to the Chief of our town’s Fire Dept. He explained that they sent the second piece of large equipment primarily because of the re-dispatch problem. If they get a second call which would require the engine, they didn’t want to risk having the fire personnel on scene in the little rescue truck and away from the engine, delaying response to the fire. (For the same reason, they wore th…
There is probably more to it, but at least the way you describe it doesn't sound convincing.
Also I should add the in the previous cities I lived in they of course didn't do that. They just used small vans for medical emergencies. Originally when I moved here i thought it was burning a lot more when I saw all those engines on the street all the time, but it wasn't that.
My suspicion is that it's related to justifying having so much of the big equipment.
But if the big engines are overused too much they likely break down much faster too, driving a vicious circle of needing more and more of them, creating bigger budgets, more power for the fire chief etc.etc.
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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.
As opposed to the Communists draining the Aral sea? It's not about socialism or capitalism here, scarce resources and humans need regulation
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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-...
This is an example of typical modern thinking that believes we can solve problems such as global warming and bee extinction by doing individual actions. This is completely nonsense. Either we do this as a public policy or there is no solution.
I have been guilty of that error countless times.
An individual's actions will not solve a society's woes, but they don't need to. If they help a little bit where they are, they can be worth doing.
Furthermore, individuals trying to help does not preclude larger-scale solutions. The people attempting individual actions could even contribute to the larger-scale or policy-based solutions.
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 (…
There is no mystical "other pollinator" that is going to fill the niche of the honey bee
Sorry, what?
https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/native-bees-often-bette...
I haven't got it out for honey bees, but as your comment makes clear, native species are underappreciated.
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Why don't we cross-breed European with Asian honeybees? Or just start using Asian honeybees?
Isn‘t that exactly hoe a special very aggressive breed was created? They breed two different ones, both not aggressive but with interesting capabilities and somehow they created an aggressive one?
A fuckup led to the release of several of swarms of african bees which went on to crossbreed with local european honeybees, so africanised honeybees were not actually a human creation.
The result turned out to mostly take from their african ancestry: highly defensive, fast reproduction, readily swarming (or even absconding), way less picky about their nesting sites, … leading to high invasiveness.
AFAIK africanised honeybees are no worse than their african ancestors (though I'm not sure they're any better).
> trapping and using dental floss to tie tracking devices to the hornets What? That seems crazy (and cool) to be able to create a tracking device light enough for a hornet to fly and still have enough battery to transmit even a periodic chirp.
It is pretty cool tech. One thing I noticed is the battery is depleting from the time it's ordered; probably not a lot of room for a power switch. This one is 3x11mm and weighs 0.15g; https://atstrack.com/tracking-products/transmitters/product-...
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 (…
> Humanity does not stand on its own, we still need nature to sustain ourselves. 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)
We don't need to "reduce our reliance on nature". We're always going to be subject to the influences of what environment we live inside of. Whether it be on planet-scale or otherwise. We don't exist in a vacuum.
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…