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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

#261

Post by Carioca »

masklinn wrote: post #178
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 (…

> 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. FWIW honeybees are not part of the native US…

As an example, passion fruit has to be pollinated by hand (with swabs or special gloves) even in most of its natural range (South America) because only certain species of Uruçu bees can be pollinate it, and they have become rare

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

#262

Post by entropea »

nurettin wrote: post #234
coliveira wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

>The US, just like every other healthy functioning country in the world, is socialist.

No, they're absolutely capitalist. Workers own the means of production in no "healthy" "functioning" government in the world.

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

#263

Post by api »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #241
api wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very fault tolerant over evolutionary and geologic time scales. The question is what the very short term effects might be and how it may impact us. As George Carlin said, we need to stop framing these issues as “saving the Earth.” The Earth will be fine. This is about saving ourselves. Same goes for climate change. The Earth has been very warm in the past, even ice free. The Earth will be fine. The question is…

Bingo, this is exactly what I was going to say. The Earth sure is fault-tolerant, we just might not enjoy what PIDs get the kill signal to repair the system.

Homo Sapiens would almost surely survive as a species. Humans are like cockroaches. It might be horribly nasty though, and definitely not something we should invite.

I like Elon’s way of putting climate change: sure we may be wrong at least a bit, but is it wise to take our best habitable planet and dump a shitload of CO2 into the atmosphere and then just see what happens because YOLO?

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

#264

Post by maxerickson »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #230
maxerickson wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calorie crops mostly self pollinate or similar (wheat, corn, soy, etc). Bees don't matter there. For things like apples, it's actually affordable to pay humans to do it. Which is not to say that bee's aren't better than humans in most ways, just that it doesn't come down to 'no options'. And like other people are saying, honeybees are livestock, they aren't 'nature'.

It's clear you are mixing up vanilla and most every kind of fruit tree. One is a high-value, low-volume speciality crop, the other is the exact opposite. Pollinating a cherry orchard! Dude, you go first!

I'm not saying it would be a good situation to end up in, I'm saying it is economically viable (so we'd still have fruit).

Hand pollination of apples is already sometimes done in China.

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

#265

Post by pjc50 »

syrrim wrote: post #248
coldtea wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Technical audiences usually go with the "technology, right or wrong" angle (as nationalists go with "my country, right or wrong"). It's more about identity validation and peer group thinking than critical and systems thinking. Plus they're into technology becau…

So if technology was used to eliminate murder hornets, maybe hn would be more in favour of the practice?

Oh, absolutely. The more genetic engineering and radiation the better. With a bit of machine learning you've got a pitch deck for murder hornet removal as a service.

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

#266

Post by lostlogin »

giantg2 wrote: post #250
yawz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Varroa is and has been my #1 problem for a while. I hate it. But I can't agree with this statement: "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 insignif…

We can't find a way to stop them + huge insects = unsolved problem This seems contradictory to me as a beek. 5/16 holes as a mouse guard should also keep huge insects out of the hive. It also should be easy to create pheromone traps if it is true that the hornet's seek out the scent of other dead hornets. On a side note, I see mites as a genetics issue. I would rather see commercial outfits using selection rather tha…

I wonder what would happen with a Queen excluder under the hive, so that the entrance required worker size or smaller?

Drone entry/exit and blockages would be an issue after a period presumably.

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

#267

Post by mplanchard »

reader_mode wrote: post #203
hellotomyrars wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> We're always going to be subject to the influences of what environment we live inside of. Houses, heating, cooling make us resilient to outside temperature and weather changes, advanced construction makes us resilient to earthquakes, etc. etc. There are people working on plans to colonise Mars - while that might not be viable in the short term - we are talking about making an environment without an atmosphere suita…

> Houses, heating, cooling make us resilient to outside temperature and weather changes

Heating and cooling necessarily heat the exterior of the heated or cooled environment more than they do heat or cool the interior. As the temperature warms, you need to cool your interior space even more, pumping yet more heat into the surrounds. For one, all that energy has to come from somewhere. For two, hopefully you don’t drive the system beyond a point where your heating and cooling can keep up.

> There are people working on plans to colonise Mars - while that might not be viable in the short term - we are talking about making an environment without an atmosphere suitable for life - and there's no reason why this shouldn't be achievable. Reducing reliance on systems such as plants requiring bees for pollination should be trivial in comparison.

There is a huge, vast, expansive, unimaginably large, ridiculously wide chasm between “working on plans to colonize Mars” and “actually colonizing Mars.” In the meantime, we’ve got ~10 billion people dependent on the existing ecosystem we’ve got here. Keeping that global ecosystem healthy enough to support those people without massive die-offs or total chaos, without the benefit of any globally organized effort to speak of, is deeply and profoundly not trivial, probably much less trivial than supporting a very small population on another planet.

Plus, even if we do manage to colonize another world without first learning how to maintain the one we have, what exactly is the end game? Hop from planet to planet, destroying any life we find or create along the way?

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

#268

Post by lostlogin »

yawz wrote: post #176
_Microft wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is very interesting. Thanks for the pointer. Much appreciated.

New Zealander here - a lot of people are using Oxalic acid and glycerine on paper strips and are getting great results here - me included.

The paper is a plasterboard jointing paper and 3-5 layers are sewn together and soaked in a solution of about 40% Oxalic acid, 60% glycerine. Used like conventional mite strips they need replacing more often but seem to work really well.

Randy Oliver has been trialing other delivery methods in California.

My hives are the best they have ever been this season, with a very strong start.

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/

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

#269

Post by lostlogin »

roughly wrote: post #162
yawz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks, I appreciate the response. 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…

Not the OP, but here in New Zealand the issues are greatly exacerbated by hive overstocking, migrant beekeepers (eg a truck brings in 100 hives one day, and the additional extras in those hives are spread to local hives), poor beekeeping, American Foul Brood and a low sale price for honey.

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

#270

Post by sandworm101 »

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 (…

Bee careful when talking about wiping out invasive species. Honeybees aren't native to north america. Nor are the majority of crops that they pollinate. "Invasive", by government definition, means not just foreign but also economically dangerous. Conversely, screwworm is native but we chose to wipe that species from north american because it was economically dangerous. I haven't heard anyone talk of allowing it back.
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