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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

#121

Post by badc0ffee »

anjel wrote: post #91
b112 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Canadian hydroelectric is the catalyst that makes winter hothouse produce cost competitive. Wealthy us elec producers have no incentive to match Canada's low cost of production. Indeed their incentives are rather contrary.

Most of the tomatoes and cucumbers I buy here in Alberta year-round are greenhouse grown in-province. Our electric power here is basically natural gas with a bit of wind and hydro. Although to your point, we're probably one of the cheapest locales in the world for NG.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#122

Post by drzaiusx11 »

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.

I've been keeping bees for well over a decade now, and Varroa mite management and prevention of downstream disease vectors like deformed wing virus are consuming ever greater amounts of our time and concern in the community.

Personally, I've tried a number of mitigations with varying levels of success--most all resulting in requeening due to toxicity of treatment. At this point unless a truly successful new therapy is found it seems like a losing battle tbh. I meet monthly with beekeepers and scientists monthly for a few years now, an 99% of the time discussions involve Varroa destructor. It has that name for a reason...

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#123

Post by drzaiusx11 »

CommonGuy wrote: post #82
agilob wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add, varroa quickly gains immunity to the pharmaceutical treatment we have, so the same medication cannot be used 2 years in a row. Most popular treatment from late 90s that used to kill 99% of varroa is now completely ineffective. It was explained to me this is well planned and solved in Czechia. Varroa treatment is refunded my the government, but only one type of medication every 6 months. It's cheaper for beeke…

Acid (oxalic acid, formic acid) treatments can be used multiple times in a row, but are harder on the bees

Very hard on queens in particular

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#126

Post by fhdkweig »

anjel wrote: post #90
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…

Robotic polinators ftw.

Better than having to do it with human hands. They had to do that when the bees died in Biosphere 2.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#127

Post by applicative »

somenameforme wrote: post #98
EdwardDiego wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a rather large body of evidence that herbicides, glyphosate in particular, are, at the minimum, contributing to the bee collapse. You can find a ton of studies on the topic - here [1] is a random one that overviews some of the literature, though it's already quite dated. It doesn't kill them, but wrecks their gut biome and causes numerous issues that contribute to colony collapse. It also significant but, as…

I had though that glysophate-blaming was dying out now the principal glysophate producer is the Chinese state.

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#129

Post by [deleted] »

somenameforme wrote: post #30
EdwardDiego wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

[deleted]

Re: Spider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees

#130

Post by thisislife2 »

dang wrote: post #116
worldvoyageur wrote: post #78

I grew up on a farm on which the apiary and all connected with it was a major part of the farm's output. Honey, beeswax, nukes (a queen and 10K or so worker bees as a starter colony, sold to other apiaries in the spring if they'd had too many winter losses), fertilizing services (drop a couple colonies off at a berry farm after dark, pick the colonies up two weeks later, profit!) and other products. It's been over te…

This is one for https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights ! (I mention this so more people can know the list exists. All are welcome to let us know at hn@ycombinator.com when you see comments we should add!)

Suggestion - instead of email, perhaps you can monitor which comments are favourited frequently and then curate the highlights from it? (I frequently do this when something is really insightful / useful to me). Making it easier to "favourite" a comment would also help here (currently it is an unnecessary 2-click process).
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