Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

connectsci.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 148 posts

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#41

Post by looping__lui »

mastermage wrote: post #28
looping__lui wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I’m just saying: stop hating bees with made up arguments

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#42

Post by bobmcnamara »

MrLeap wrote: post #9
shevy-java wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The mites are not what is killing the bees. And, by the way - natural pathogens exist in just about any population. These very, very rarely led to extinction. There is a media trend to claim the mites are at fault. This reminds me of prior fault yielding e. g. "mad cow disease" - and then the media also stopped doing any further investigation at that point. It's as if they have break points where you can not go p…

Lotta unsubstantiated claims you're making there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#44

Post by b112 »

j4k0bfr wrote: post #38
mastermage wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The thing that always baffles me with vertical farming is sunlight. Assuming most crops are pretty good at turning full spectrum sunlight into useful stuff, why shrink your solar energy per crop? And assuming you get around this via grow lights, surely the energy and material cost goes up too much for high-volume crops to make economical sense.

This only makes sense in certain circumstances I think. For example, shipping tomatoes from 5000km away when it's winter in Canada.

I recently did some research, and there are multiple local greenhouses around many large Canadian cities for just this reason. They are competitive in the winter, and sell to local supermarkets. The cost of the greenhouses vs shipping + loss.

And there is a loss in nutrition, when you harvest green and it takes weeks to hit the table, vs something picked yesterday and picked when actually ripe.

Of course, these are large warehouses, not typical greenouses.

So I guess the answer is, it can make sense in certain circumstances. A warmer place where you can grow fruit outside year round, not so much.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#45

Post by ssl-3 »

j4k0bfr wrote: post #38
mastermage wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The thing that always baffles me with vertical farming is sunlight. Assuming most crops are pretty good at turning full spectrum sunlight into useful stuff, why shrink your solar energy per crop? And assuming you get around this via grow lights, surely the energy and material cost goes up too much for high-volume crops to make economical sense.

I think it's hard to generalize whether vertical farms are good or bad; efficient or inefficient. It seems that whether it works or not relies very heavily on the locality.

In my part of Ohio, we have lots of farmland -- and plenty of water that just falls out of the sky. We've got reasonably-long, generally-hot days during our growing season and we get some serious crop production done here while it lasts.

The rest of the year? The days are short. It's dark and cold outside; frozen, even. We can't grow crops outside here in the winter.

But vertical farms (eg, fancy greenhouses) can just keep going. With artificial light and/or supplemental heat, they're still producing even in the depths of winter.

Thus, I can go to the grocery store near my house and buy a locally-grown tomato in February. It's expensive to get this done, but the alternatives include paying someone to drive it up here from thousands of miles away or just going without a tomato until after things have warmed up again and stayed that way for awhile.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#46

Post by mrweasel »

roboben wrote: post #3

The hard truth these days is that the work of bee keeping is like 80% keeping the mites in check. Plus all current treatments render the honey inedible so you can only do it at the end of the season.

Depending on location acid treatments can only be done after the honey harvest anyway, due to temperatures, so it's a minor issue.

You can also use drone frames, and remove drone brood during the summer, or cage the queen a period of time. These are both mechanical treatments and obviously doesn't hurt the honey.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#47

Post by gadders »

nerbert wrote: post #35
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.

Neither with horses

Good point. We need to genetically modify horses that can pollinate plants and create honey.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#48

Post by mrweasel »

benbojangles wrote: post #39

One day bees will evolve to produce spider venom

Asian bees are perfectly capable of removing and killing mites as is. So are some breed species of European honey bees. There have been found abandoned apiary in France where the bees have evolved to groom themselves and remove the mites.

The bees does need to evolve, but not to the point of producing venom. Mechanical mite removal works equally well.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#49

Post by mrweasel »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #31
shevy-java wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The mites are not what is killing the bees. And, by the way - natural pathogens exist in just about any population. These very, very rarely led to extinction. There is a media trend to claim the mites are at fault. This reminds me of prior fault yielding e. g. "mad cow disease" - and then the media also stopped doing any further investigation at that point. It's as if they have break points where you can not go p…

People who believe these types of things tend to get their information from the same places. Which podcasts do you listen to?

There is a valid point though. All types of insects are in decline, but the decline in bees is exclusively due to varroa? It's not unreasonable to assume that at least part of the decline in bees is due to the same conditions that results in less butterflies, beetles, dragonflies and so on.

The removal of habitats suitable to insects and modern farming certainly plays a part as well.

Honeybees deal fairly well with pesticides, wild bees doesn't[1], but none of them can deal with losing habitats.

1) https://www.biavl.dk/medlemmer/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Bi... (In Danish).

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#50

Post by throwaway2037 »

onesandofgrain wrote: post #43

How did they screen for this venom?

Too lazy to read an article that takes about one minute? Sheesh.

    > “We screened 50 venoms, mostly from spiders and scorpions, by applying them externally to the mites,” says Herzig.

    > “We found more than 75% killed the mites within 24 hours. We selected 2 of the most potent spider venoms for further analysis.”
Post reply on HN