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Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

backreaction.blogspot.com

141–150 of 184 posts

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#141
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is neem realistic for large scale farms? We use it in our personal garden, but you need to continually re-apply every 4-5 days with really good coverage for a period of time for it to be effective. It has been hit or miss for us. If neem doesn't work then its oh well, plant something else, but we aren't selling a crop.

It seems to have worked without many problems in France, they had a ban in 2018: https://cen.acs.org/environment/pesticides/France-bans-uses-... but there has been a recent exception made for the sugar beet crop: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-sees-no-easy-fix...

But did the ban have the hoped for results?

When I checked this last, it doesn't seem to have made any difference to insects. Is there new data?

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of being alarmed of the Bee Apocalypse is that you look at the honey bees as an indicator, just like the lichens on trees are an indicator of air pollution (few lichens mean a bad air quality). When honey bees are dwindling, pretty much all the insects are too. The Bee Apocalypse has not gone anywhere, it's just still here, and it is in fact an Insect Apocalypse, which is many orders of magnitude wors…

Why would I do that? Closely related species compete for the same resources. 9 out of 10, one species "dwindling" just means another is gaining.

In this cas it does not. The insects as a whole are in decline.

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#143
post #13

This article buries its lede, which is about how honey bees get all the attention but are at less risk than wild bees: > And that brings us to the actual problem. The honey bee (Apis mellifera) is only one of about 20 thousand different bee species. The non-honey bees are usually referred to as wild bees, and each location has its native species. According to an estimate from researchers at Cornell University in 2006…

Around here honeybees do not compete with wild bees for much. Honeybees are a domesticated non-native species incapable of pollinating most native plants. Native bees are well adapted to pollinating native plants but have trouble with the non-native plants.

The problems that native bees here have are several.

o Insecticides (aka pesticides) applied to agricultural crops affect all insects, good and bad, including bees.

o Loss of, for lack of a better word, habitat. Native species of plants are displaced by introduced species that the native bees can not harvest nectar from. Note that urbanization isn't really a big problem for bees because there are plenty of flowers in the city. But are they the right kind of flowers? Orchards full of foreign plants like tree nuts on the other hand, is loss of habitat.

o Introduced disease. Not only are foreign bees brought in (eg. honeybees) but foreign honey is brought in from far away continents chalk full of spores of varieties of nosema or foulbrood or other threats. Honeybees catch these diseases, and bring varroa and tracheal mites and other problems, and spread them to the native bees.

o Honeybees are domesticated agricultural animals like beef cattle and pigs. If the numbers decrease we just breed more until market demand is met. It takes 21 days to breed a new queen and split a colony. Native bees, well, they rely on natural methods of reproduction. The birds and the bees, literally.

As to how a big colony of honeybees deals with a virus: they don't just "throw out the infected bees" since it usually affects the brood more than the workers. If the brood dies, there will be no more workers in a few weeks and the colony collapses. How it usually gets dealt with is the beekeeper medicates the hive. Or, in the case of foulbrood, digs a pit, burns the hive and all nearby hives and all equipment, and buries it like so much nuclear waste.

There is no threat to honeybees. No such luck for wild bees.

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#144

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations > “Some of the insects most affected include bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, dragonflies and damselflies.” Great. It’s gonna be nothing but roaches, mosquitos, and ants eventually.

Mosquitoes are actually an important pollinators for many species. Mosquitoes aren't parasites they need blood only during their reproduction cycle

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To which old-world crops do you refer?

(Not my knowledge, just repeating sources): almonds, some apples, melons, alfafa, plums, avocado, blueberry, cherry, pear, cucumber, sunflower, cranberry, kiwi, etc. Source: PDF page 4: https://www.beyondpesticides.org/assets/media/documents/poll... Background, in order from "most readable" to "scholarly": https://www.museumoftheearth.org/bees/agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated..…

Blueberries, sunflowers, and cranberries are all native to North America. The things Europeans sometimes call "blueberries" (bilberries) are an entirely different species.

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#146
post #29
post #25

Simply put. Please America stop using more and more artificial modern chemicals in your farming and go back to tried and tested agricultural methods. Your soil is getting destroyed through mega tractors. Your buying everything glaxo can sell and your harming your own wasteland that for some reason you grow copious amounts of corn on. The problem is still there and making an article suggesting that it's not for a (sur…

Artificial modern chemicals increase yield, which reduces food price. Yes, we should use less of those chemicals. Yes, that will hit the poorest hardest. Is this problem solvable? Maybe. But let’s not pretend it’s simple.

it will really hit the poor hard when the soil depletion reduces yield permanently -and the phosphate supply is already coming to the end and costs increasing

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#147
post #13

This article buries its lede, which is about how honey bees get all the attention but are at less risk than wild bees: > And that brings us to the actual problem. The honey bee (Apis mellifera) is only one of about 20 thousand different bee species. The non-honey bees are usually referred to as wild bees, and each location has its native species. According to an estimate from researchers at Cornell University in 2006…

The whole point of being alarmed of the Bee Apocalypse is that you look at the honey bees as an indicator, just like the lichens on trees are an indicator of air pollution (few lichens mean a bad air quality). When honey bees are dwindling, pretty much all the insects are too. The Bee Apocalypse has not gone anywhere, it's just still here, and it is in fact an Insect Apocalypse, which is many orders of magnitude wors…

> just like the lichens on trees are an indicator of air pollution (few lichens mean a bad air quality).

Lichen indicators for air pollution are fascinatingly more complicated than that. Certain lichens respond positively to air pollution due to excess nutrients like ammonia and nitrates in the air. Imagine an algal bloom but the nutrient pollution is in the air instead of in the water. The US Forest Service produced an interesting video overviewing these phenomena.

Air Pollution & Lichens: A Tour of the Columbia River Gorge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3dPrgAkN3M

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#148
Seemed like an OK article, but punctuating your essay with a cheerful reference to a violent counter-intelligence operation by the Chinese Communist Party that crushed free-thought for generations is so tone deaf it makes me doubt the author’s judgment on everything else.

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#149
post #92

I thought this was going to be about the impending doom of the Mexican killer bees we were all warned about in the 80s but that never came. It was in the news for months about a cloud of killer bees.

I thought they were the Africanized ones? Those were the ones I read about as a kid in my school library, and the way they depicted their projected spread across the USA made it look like a pestilence worthy of Revelation. I honestly thought I wasn't going to live to become an adult because we'd all be over taken by super aggressive bees.

They were supposedly spreading north from Mexico if I remember. To kill us all indeed.

Re: Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

#150
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they were the Africanized ones? Those were the ones I read about as a kid in my school library, and the way they depicted their projected spread across the USA made it look like a pestilence worthy of Revelation. I honestly thought I wasn't going to live to become an adult because we'd all be over taken by super aggressive bees.

They were supposedly spreading north from Mexico if I remember. To kill us all indeed.

Just found these:

https://groovyhistory.com/killer-bees-1970s

https://blue-succubus.livejournal.com/83977.html?

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