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Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

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Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#21

Post by gadders »

schainks wrote: post #15

Honeybees are not native to North America. It is great and currently necessary we use them the way we do. It makes one wonder in the age of AI and evolving farm practices, can we start finding ways to cultivate already-climate-adapted native bees to do the work? Can we leverage adaptations for specific crops? I get it that honeybees work great at pollinating monoculture fields, etc., but that does not change the fact…

>>Honeybees are not native to North America.

Neither are horses.

I guess the issue is you don't get honey with the native bees.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#22

Post by looping__lui »

schainks wrote: post #15

Honeybees are not native to North America. It is great and currently necessary we use them the way we do. It makes one wonder in the age of AI and evolving farm practices, can we start finding ways to cultivate already-climate-adapted native bees to do the work? Can we leverage adaptations for specific crops? I get it that honeybees work great at pollinating monoculture fields, etc., but that does not change the fact…

I suppose honey bees are not native in North America pretty much the same way as the human species?

I don’t quite understand why there seems to be a pretty persistent thread around “honey bees are invasive and harm the ecosystem by stealing all the food from the native bees and doing all their pollination; that’s why they decline” - when at the same time the use of pesticides is so rampant that insects are literally gone entirely.

Honey bees are not great and reliable pollinators btw.

So the solution is: more genetically modified crops? More pesticides?

Unless “we need to stop our use of pesticides and we should also acknowledge that honey bees are an invasive species and consider making changes to the way we do monocultures” are in the same sentence this entire “honey bees are invasive” argument just feels super weird. Pesticides kill native pollinators. It’s not the honey bees.

Edit: and just to be clear - honey bees do not survive in the wild by themselves anymore due to varroa mites. They essentially depend on humans to protect them. That’s what the entire purpose of this article is about. So, if humans stopped keeping honey bees - they’d have a pretty hard time surviving in the wild on their own.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#23

Post by gadders »

hyperionultra wrote: post #14
aussieguy1234 wrote: post #8

So what's it going to do to the honey? Will we have spider venom laced honey?

As article suggest - it is fully biodegradable. I suppose venom has some short half-life. And since peptide is isolated, not full chain toxin, it should be harmless to humans.

I'd imagine eating it has a different effect than having it directly enter the bloodstream as well.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#24

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

schainks wrote: post #15

Honeybees are not native to North America. It is great and currently necessary we use them the way we do. It makes one wonder in the age of AI and evolving farm practices, can we start finding ways to cultivate already-climate-adapted native bees to do the work? Can we leverage adaptations for specific crops? I get it that honeybees work great at pollinating monoculture fields, etc., but that does not change the fact…

You could pick up a catalog from any of these places and find half a dozen different species of bees to cultivate for pollination. Blue mason bees come to mind. Anything that's even slightly domesticatable is being pursued. Some of these bees are loners too, perfect for the hipster crowd.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#25

Post by colechristensen »

gadders wrote: post #21
schainks wrote: post #15

Honeybees are not native to North America. It is great and currently necessary we use them the way we do. It makes one wonder in the age of AI and evolving farm practices, can we start finding ways to cultivate already-climate-adapted native bees to do the work? Can we leverage adaptations for specific crops? I get it that honeybees work great at pollinating monoculture fields, etc., but that does not change the fact…

>>Honeybees are not native to North America. Neither are horses. I guess the issue is you don't get honey with the native bees.

A quite similar horse species went extinct in North America ~10,000 years ago likely due to humans.

The horse ancestor species come from the Americas and migrated to Eurasia over the bearing land bridge.

Horses were only missing from North America for 10,000 of the last 50 million years.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#26

Post by firen777 »

colechristensen wrote: post #25
gadders wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Honeybees are not native to North America. Neither are horses. I guess the issue is you don't get honey with the native bees.

A quite similar horse species went extinct in North America ~10,000 years ago likely due to humans. The horse ancestor species come from the Americas and migrated to Eurasia over the bearing land bridge. Horses were only missing from North America for 10,000 of the last 50 million years.

I was about to say the same: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse#Equus

Of all the examples to pick from, seeing GP picked horse made me wonder if GP was doing it for gits and shiggles.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#27

Post by tamimio »

Kinda related, but in my house I don’t kill spiders, as long as they are in the corners they can live rent free while cleaning other bugs. Before, one time I went and killed all of them, in less than a week I started seeing sliverfish and similar bugs, I realized I messed up the natural order, so I just keep em now!

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#28

Post by mastermage »

looping__lui wrote: post #22
schainks wrote: post #15

Honeybees are not native to North America. It is great and currently necessary we use them the way we do. It makes one wonder in the age of AI and evolving farm practices, can we start finding ways to cultivate already-climate-adapted native bees to do the work? Can we leverage adaptations for specific crops? I get it that honeybees work great at pollinating monoculture fields, etc., but that does not change the fact…

I suppose honey bees are not native in North America pretty much the same way as the human species? I don’t quite understand why there seems to be a pretty persistent thread around “honey bees are invasive and harm the ecosystem by stealing all the food from the native bees and doing all their pollination; that’s why they decline” - when at the same time the use of pesticides is so rampant that insects are literally…

An idea that sprang to mind and please point me out at which points its unrealistic and why because I am talking completely out of my ass here. If we want to reduce mono culture but we still need to somehow figure out how to provide humanity. Could large scale vertical farms, in Green Houses reduce the footprint of monocultures? By being more productive year round? Or is that just technolgist delusions of mine?

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#30

Post by somenameforme »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #19
fodkodrasz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, it cannot happen that Big Agro's poisons are to fault...

Big Ag was already using those poisons before varroa, so if it was the cause, you would've seen it manifest before varroa.

It seems that varroa were first discovered in North America in 1987. [1] Glyphosate use at that time was around 4,500 metric tons. By 2014 we were up to 125,000 metric tons [2]. There was an exponential increase coming after 1996 when glyphosate resistant GMO crops became a thing. I don't have an opinion on this topic one way or the other, but there seem to be quite a lot of negative correlates since then, and this is just another one. Of course correlation doesn't mean causation, but you can't completely dismiss it.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa

[2] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5044953/

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