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Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

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Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#71

Post by 000ooo000 »

mrweasel wrote: post #64
000ooo000 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's basically the same as claiming that hunters don't care about animals Is there a suggestion here that people who kill animals for fun/leisure care for them? In the same sense that one might use the word 'care' when referring to a loved one or a pet?

Yes... I mean you probably won't shoot the family dog if it's sick, you'd take it to the vet. Arguably hunters don't think in terms of single animals, unlike farmers, they care about the overall welfare of the ecosystem so that it may support sufficient number of animals to allow for hunting. I don't know how it works elsewhere, but I'd bet that Danish hunters do more to protect nature than any vegan or vegetarian or…

So hunters 'care' for animals in the ecosystem so that they can continue to kill the animals in the ecosystem? Not very convincing..

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#72

Post by pvaldes »

cryptonector wrote: post #66
pvaldes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Beekeper extracts almost all bee and replaces it with sugar If you mean that the larvae combs are removed and replaced by sugar... most probably not. The idea is having as much bees by beehive as you can breed. If you mean that beekeepers remove "almost all" honey leaving bees to starve, this is an oversimplification. Any professional beekeeper know that will need to leave enough honey for winter. Leaving a minimum…

> If you mean that the larvae combs are removed and replaced by sugar... most probably not. The idea is having as much bees by beehive as you can breed. GP almost certainly meant that beekeepers take all the honey then they feed the bees sugar-water. That actually is true of some (many?) beekeepers.

It depends strongly on location. Winter bees live on autumn fat. If the bees are well feed in fall and the winters are warm, will need much less honey to survive. The beehive will not be required to be warmed against chilling temperatures for example so bees don't need to spend so much energy warming it

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#73

Post by Lacerda69 »

cryptonector wrote: post #54
primax wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also hives can (and do) abscond and go feral from the beekeepers hives any time they wish. They stay because the conditions are good.

Basically this. Colonies stay for the room and occasional board, as well as all the flowers that beekeepers typically plant in the hopes of making their bees productive. Colonies do abscond, absolutely, and there's lots of feral honeybee colonies out there.

Ok maybe its just a mutually very benificial relationship and we could survive without each other; but it's nicer together.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#74

Post by depressedpanda »

000ooo000 wrote: post #71
mrweasel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes... I mean you probably won't shoot the family dog if it's sick, you'd take it to the vet. Arguably hunters don't think in terms of single animals, unlike farmers, they care about the overall welfare of the ecosystem so that it may support sufficient number of animals to allow for hunting. I don't know how it works elsewhere, but I'd bet that Danish hunters do more to protect nature than any vegan or vegetarian or…

So hunters 'care' for animals in the ecosystem so that they can continue to kill the animals in the ecosystem? Not very convincing..

Like it or not predators hunting prey is part of any natural ecosystem. A necessary part.

I don't know what it's like where you are from, but in general I'd say hunters care a lot more about, and do more for, nature in their local ecosystem than your average city dwelling vegan hipster.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#75

Post by bleuarff »

mrweasel wrote: post #64
000ooo000 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's basically the same as claiming that hunters don't care about animals Is there a suggestion here that people who kill animals for fun/leisure care for them? In the same sense that one might use the word 'care' when referring to a loved one or a pet?

Yes... I mean you probably won't shoot the family dog if it's sick, you'd take it to the vet. Arguably hunters don't think in terms of single animals, unlike farmers, they care about the overall welfare of the ecosystem so that it may support sufficient number of animals to allow for hunting. I don't know how it works elsewhere, but I'd bet that Danish hunters do more to protect nature than any vegan or vegetarian or…

On the other hand, the head of the french hunting federation has openly said he couldn't care less about animals and regulations. While receiving public funds to fulfill a mission of regulation.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#76

Post by mrweasel »

bleuarff wrote: post #75
mrweasel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes... I mean you probably won't shoot the family dog if it's sick, you'd take it to the vet. Arguably hunters don't think in terms of single animals, unlike farmers, they care about the overall welfare of the ecosystem so that it may support sufficient number of animals to allow for hunting. I don't know how it works elsewhere, but I'd bet that Danish hunters do more to protect nature than any vegan or vegetarian or…

On the other hand, the head of the french hunting federation has openly said he couldn't care less about animals and regulations. While receiving public funds to fulfill a mission of regulation.

Okay, that is actually down right idiotic. The Danish hunters association even wants cat regulated due to the excessive damage they do to wildlife.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#77

Post by scruple »

mrweasel wrote: post #55
loxdalen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

https://aabentlandbrug.dk/faq Inside a cow must have at least 6.6 - 8m2, depending on the size of the cow. Note that the rules are worse for cows breed for meat.

Interesting. Where I grew up, rural Ohio, was a massive dairy farm where the milk was put into container ships and sent overseas to... Denmark.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#78

Post by cryptonector »

pvaldes wrote: post #72
cryptonector wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you mean that the larvae combs are removed and replaced by sugar... most probably not. The idea is having as much bees by beehive as you can breed. GP almost certainly meant that beekeepers take all the honey then they feed the bees sugar-water. That actually is true of some (many?) beekeepers.

It depends strongly on location. Winter bees live on autumn fat. If the bees are well feed in fall and the winters are warm, will need much less honey to survive. The beehive will not be required to be warmed against chilling temperatures for example so bees don't need to spend so much energy warming it

For sure. Where we are we have mild winters.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#79

Post by swores »

depressedpanda wrote: post #74
000ooo000 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So hunters 'care' for animals in the ecosystem so that they can continue to kill the animals in the ecosystem? Not very convincing..

Like it or not predators hunting prey is part of any natural ecosystem. A necessary part. I don't know what it's like where you are from, but in general I'd say hunters care a lot more about, and do more for, nature in their local ecosystem than your average city dwelling vegan hipster.

> I'd say hunters care a lot more about, and do more for, nature in their local ecosystem than your average city dwelling vegan hipster.

I don't think you've met many vegan hipsters, as while I can't claim to be either of those things I've known many, many of them and would pretty much universally disagree with you.

(Though a) I'm in UK which maybe makes a different compared to where you are, and b) anecdotes are of course not data, and the one thing we can say for sure is that within types of people such as "vegan" or "hunter" there are certainly going to be some who are absolute cunts, some who are practically angels, and everything in between. But despite only having anecdotes not data, I feel pretty confident in my anecdotal experience backing up the notion that the average vegan is generally going to care more about animals than the average non-vegan).

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#80

Post by swores »

avalys wrote: post #37

You can tell who didn’t bother to read the article here, by the people who clearly assumed the article was asking “Is Beekeeping Morally Wrong?”, as opposed to the actual topic of the article which might have been better titled “Is Beekeeping Using the Wrong Approach?”

Or maybe people are just more interested in arguing for/against the first one and a comments thread like this seems like a good place for it? It's not like they're such unrelated topics that discussing beekeeping ethics in this thread is ridiculous if that's what people want to discuss, it's not like discussing potato chips in a thread about CPU chips.

I'll also add that I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong, as you seem to, with coming straight to a HN comments thread without first reading the article. I know I'm not alone in intentionally doing that quite often, partly because for many subjects (including this one) I'm not really interested enough to want to read an article-length deep dive of any single person's opinion, whereas seeing a wide range of views in comment-length bee-sized pieces has the potential to be interesting to me. I've always got the option to go read the full article if after reading the comments it seems like I'd find it interesting to do so.

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