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Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

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Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#231

Post by xg15 »

philtechguy wrote: post #222
honkycat wrote: post #156

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 (…

It's useful to note that system's thinking is such an outdated model of looking at the world. Basically modeling the world as a fancy mechanism, with mechanistic explanations about every aspects of the world. Very reductionist about organisms, nature, societies, etc.

Why is it outdated? Do you have any souces for that?

What do you propose instead?

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#232

Post by lostlogin »

petertodd wrote: post #65
lostlogin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most beekeepers choose to euthanize more aggressive hives to deliberately breed calmer, safer, bees. I wander why they don’t just requeen?

IIUC workers (or at least worker larvae) can become queens under the right conditions, so it's more likely for the undesirable genes to be removed if the entire hive is euthanized. Also, in the case of that video, IIRC having the still aggressive workers in the locations available to that beekeeper wouldn't be desirable, even if later generations were calmer.

> it's more likely for the undesirable genes to be removed if the entire hive is euthanized.

Yes, removing the genes is needed, but that can be done by killing the old queen, waiting a day then putting in a caged queen of known good genes. There is no need to kill the hive that I am aware of.

Requeening to correct temperament is part of beekeeping and killing the hive seems extreme. It is also wasteful of the equipment and comb because depending on the method used it won’t be able to be salvaged.

Killing hives is generally done by pouring petrol in the top then sealing the hive up, and is seen as one of the more humane methods. However I’ve only known this being done for American Foul Brood, not for temperament.

The improved temperament sometimes happens almost instantly, but is generally over a about a month as the workers die off. The total lifespan of a worker is only about 6 weeks in midsummer.

I keep bees, but in New Zealand an aggressive colony is a lesser beast than an africanised monster. I hope I’m missing something (eg what is africanised bees reject new queens, but I can’t find anything suggesting this is the case).

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#233

Post by notabee »

honkycat wrote: post #156

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 (…

Yep, genetic diversity is a resource. It's painstakingly written natural code that solves various biological problems. We're just now getting to the point where we can start to understand this massive legacy codebase that creates the biosphere, and it's like we're just deleting huge swathes of it without analyzing it because we want more space to store cat jpgs or something stupid like that. So goddamned shortsighted.

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#234

Post by nurettin »

coliveira wrote: post #183
mhh__ wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to the Communists draining the Aral sea? It's not about socialism or capitalism here, scarce resources and humans need regulation

Why you assume that non-capitalism is the same as communism? Capitalist ideology and communism are extremes, in my opinion there is a healthy balance between them.

Because communist apologetics usually come from people who are communits, not people who think there is a healthy balance. Which is already in law. The US, just like every other healthy functioning country in the world, is socialist. They just suck at it horrendously in certain fields. The capitalist ideal is talked about, but mostly because of the innovation aspect, not the worker exploitation aspect. In fact, and especially these days, manual labor is so expensive, people are getting into DIY just to avoid it.

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#235

Post by xg15 »

reader_mode wrote: post #177
honkycat wrote: post #156

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)

Yeah, I'm looking forward to living in a world made out of dust deserts and domed cities - but we managed to keep the 9-to-5 bullshit jobs and the stock market alive! Awesome!

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#236

Post by HarryHirsch »

BurningFrog wrote: post #227
vinbreau wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True, but it's also good to remember that the new system isn't "worse" or "better" than the old one. A lot of people seem to think that if you "destroy" an ecosystem it is a step toward a lifeless environment.

We are experiencing this in parts of the ocean - a switch from fishes to jellyfish. One is edible, the other, not so much.

Here's some comments: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/333/6049/1547.6

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#237

Post by ceejayoz »

brink wrote: post #219
ceejayoz wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't "oh, you're wearing a mask, to protect me!" be a "positive daily human interaction"? Perhaps we're just mis-framing things?

Would you feel good about someone smiling at you they were forced by law to smile?

Sure, if their refusal to smile might kill me, and smiling cost them little/nothing to do.

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#238

Post by steve_adams_86 »

ip26 wrote: post #186
honkycat wrote: post #156

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 (…

If we don't have honey bees, we do not have crops. 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.

I know where I live most native pollinators are very selective and, as a result, in very small numbers since their habitat doesn’t resemble what it did even 100 years ago. They’re a drop in the bucket compared to what we require... And even if we made enormous efforts to boost their populations, I think they’d largely only pollinate fruit trees.

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#239

Post by Supermancho »

hellotomyrars wrote: post #189
reader_mode wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

Extinction events don't happen that often. Meanwhile the massive changes we've made to our environment (in a relatively small time frame) are having a serious impact on our ability to survive on this planet. 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.

> Extinction events don't happen that often.

That's a matter of perspective. I would say they happen all the time.

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#240

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

honkycat wrote: post #156

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 (…

What does this have to do with an invasive species? Do you assume that we allow Murder Hornets to spread and displace multiple native species? I'm confused about the intent of your post.
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