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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

#61

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?

Over the years, many firms have poured many $millions into vertical farms.

If you're growing extreme-value crops - marijuana, or maybe exotic salad greens for Michelin-starred restaurants - that can actually work.

Otherwise, you're trying to compete with millions of square miles of naturally sun-lit dirt, and extremely efficient modern agro-tech stacks. Bankruptcy awaits.

> just technologist delusions of mine?

I'd bet you've read several articles about techno-utopians setting up vertical farms, and their grand dreams. Which always hand-wave the "how can this massively expensive setup complete with dirt?" part.

Farming sun-lit dirt does not magically require monoculture, nor poor farming practices. The problems is monoculture's appeal to certain human cultures - especially profit-maximizing "big ag" capitalists - and the agricultural policies enacted by naive politicians.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#62
post #57

Powdered sugar is the standard treatment for removing varroa mites that have emerged from capped cells. "The peptides killed only the mites, while the bees survived." What benefits do these new treatments offer? They certainly won't be cheaper. https://www.honeybeesuite.com/can-powdered-sugar-control-var... Edit: "Treatments every week killed more mites than treatments every two weeks, which killed more mites than tr…

There currently isn't a effective treatment for varroa that doesn't also kill the hive. It is not a solved problem, and there is certainly room for more research in this space.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#63
post #57

Powdered sugar is the standard treatment for removing varroa mites that have emerged from capped cells. "The peptides killed only the mites, while the bees survived." What benefits do these new treatments offer? They certainly won't be cheaper. https://www.honeybeesuite.com/can-powdered-sugar-control-var... Edit: "Treatments every week killed more mites than treatments every two weeks, which killed more mites than tr…

The article you linked lists a bunch of downsides to powdered sugar: it doesn’t kill the mites it just encourages the bees to brush them off, it has reduced effectiveness when it’s humid, it doesn’t work on mites that aren’t actively on a bees body, and it has to be applied regularly.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#64

Check out Paul Stamets' research using Mycelium to give honeybees an immuneboost. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-32194-8

TIL that the Star Trek Stamets character is based on a real world Paul Stamets working on actual Mycelium. Wow

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes the mites are what kills the bees. What is that asssumption is flawed?

Then all the scientists who study apiary are wrong and someone in the HN comments knows better than all of them. Congratulations, I look forward to your Nobel prize.

while mites are evidently the ultimate cause of bee death in this scenario, i implicate humans due to their widespread enabling of mite destruction.

https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/article/24/3/20/7683...

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#66

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?

Over the years, many firms have poured many $millions into vertical farms. If you're growing extreme -value crops - marijuana, or maybe exotic salad greens for Michelin-starred restaurants - that can actually work. Otherwise, you're trying to compete with millions of square miles of naturally sun-lit dirt, and extremely efficient modern agro-tech stacks. Bankruptcy awaits. > just technologist delusions of mine? I'd b…

> you're trying to compete with millions of square miles of naturally sun-lit dirt

You're begging the question with this statement. Indoor growing is used when you don't have access to this kind of resource. There are many locations where access to land or suitable conditions is restricted.

CEA has been used profitably for a long time, and the most valuable crops are mushrooms and leafy greens, not exotic or illegal plants.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#68

Some potentially seriously good news there if it all pans out the way it sounds like it might. Fingers crossed for the bees!

This assumes the mites are what kills the bees. What is that asssumption is flawed?

This assumes no such thing at all (as I'm clearly no expert on bees), but it does assume that literal parasites cannot possibly be a good thing for the bees, and anything that genuinely helps the bees is a net plus for us all.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#70
post #45
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just thinking like if something doesn't grow in winter, is it because of lack of plant's adaptation or is it because their primary vector for seed dispersal hasn't adapted to survive in that weather or may be because it is not safe to consume in that season.

Or simply put, can wild animals eat tomatoes safely(on evolutionary timescale) in winter if they don't normally grow in winter.

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