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Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#21

Post by hristov »

tptacek wrote: post #11
levbrie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the assertion is that in order to maintain the bee population at the level necessary to meet demands on agriculture given the extraordinary rise in the death rate of both individual bees and entire colonies, the beekeeping industry has had to import far more colonies per year.

That doesn't make sense. Again: active colonies , not the number imported. Literally: there are more live bees in the US post-neonicotinoid.

If you have signed a pollination contract to provide 100 beehives for a commercial orchard and your colonies keep dying then in order to be sure you can perform your contract and not incur damages, you will make sure you have more than 100 beehives in order to allow for colony collapse.

Similarly if you are making honey. If you have the right to make honey over an area that will support 100 beehives but you know that 20 of them are going to die, ten you will put in 120 beehives.

Commercial beekeepers know how to create new colonies by artificially triggering the split/swarming process. Thus, the logical response of commercial beekeepers to the colony collapse disorder is to keep extra colonies around. It makes complete sense.

Unfortunately, I doubt a similar adaptation is happening in the wild. We are losing wild pollinators and that may have all kinds of negative effects on the ecosystem.

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#22

Post by CodeWriter23 »

tptacek wrote: post #18
levbrie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This response is precisely what has made insecticides so incredibly dangerous for world agriculture. Documentaries like "The Vanishing of the Bees" and "More than Honey" do a great job highlighting just how criminally negligent the agriculture industry as a whole has been to bees. What I haven't seen is an analysis of how devastating the large-scale destruction of insect populations is to the world's ecosystem. We ar…

Could you be more specific as to how pesticides have been criminally negligent to bees? This specific article is about neonicotinoids, which were introduced to replace pesticides with far worse impacts on the environment. Is there a source you can find that shows neonicotinoids as used in the wild being calamitous for bees? I can find sources for you with commercial beekeepers pollinating canola crops seed-treated wi…

Your argument implies some type of biological monoculture, i.e., all crops will behave the same as canola. On what basis do you make this assertion?

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#24

Post by tptacek »

hristov wrote: post #21
tptacek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make sense. Again: active colonies , not the number imported. Literally: there are more live bees in the US post-neonicotinoid.

If you have signed a pollination contract to provide 100 beehives for a commercial orchard and your colonies keep dying then in order to be sure you can perform your contract and not incur damages, you will make sure you have more than 100 beehives in order to allow for colony collapse. Similarly if you are making honey. If you have the right to make honey over an area that will support 100 beehives but you know that…

Which wild pollinators are we losing?

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#25

Post by Ratufa »

tptacek wrote: post #3

If neonicotinoids are causing a long-term decline in bee populations, why does their introduction correspond with a global increase in beehives?

Active hives have increased because beekeepers have reacted to the increase in bee die-offs by splitting hives and otherwise increasing the number of hives they have. This causes an increase in demand for queens, and companies that sell queens will have more hives in order to meet that demand. Also, simple economic growth is a possible contributor to the increase in number of hives.

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#26

Post by tptacek »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #22
tptacek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you be more specific as to how pesticides have been criminally negligent to bees? This specific article is about neonicotinoids, which were introduced to replace pesticides with far worse impacts on the environment. Is there a source you can find that shows neonicotinoids as used in the wild being calamitous for bees? I can find sources for you with commercial beekeepers pollinating canola crops seed-treated wi…

Your argument implies some type of biological monoculture, i.e., all crops will behave the same as canola. On what basis do you make this assertion?

No, I cited canola because it's the crop most widely treated with clothianidin --- virtually all North American canola is treated with neonicotinoids of some sort.

Also, your argument would be a bit stronger if canola wasn't the crop referred to in the study the BBC post is talking about.

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#27

Post by tptacek »

Ratufa wrote: post #25
tptacek wrote: post #3

If neonicotinoids are causing a long-term decline in bee populations, why does their introduction correspond with a global increase in beehives?

Active hives have increased because beekeepers have reacted to the increase in bee die-offs by splitting hives and otherwise increasing the number of hives they have. This causes an increase in demand for queens, and companies that sell queens will have more hives in order to meet that demand. Also, simple economic growth is a possible contributor to the increase in number of hives.

Do I properly understand your argument, like the one below, to be that despite the increase in beehives, there are fewer live bees in the US?

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#28

Post by smallnamespace »

tptacek wrote: post #17
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active colonies != total bee population. If the mortality rate is high, then you need more colonies with reproducing bees in them to maintain the population at a certain level.

Can you please cite the source that shows total bee population declining as number of active colonies increases?

https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43191.pdf

Page 10

“Long-term population trends for the honey bee, the most important managed pollinator, are demonstrably downward.”

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#29

Post by smallnamespace »

tptacek wrote: post #24
hristov wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have signed a pollination contract to provide 100 beehives for a commercial orchard and your colonies keep dying then in order to be sure you can perform your contract and not incur damages, you will make sure you have more than 100 beehives in order to allow for colony collapse. Similarly if you are making honey. If you have the right to make honey over an area that will support 100 beehives but you know that…

Which wild pollinators are we losing?

Wild bees, for one.

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#30

Post by tptacek »

smallnamespace wrote: post #28
tptacek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please cite the source that shows total bee population declining as number of active colonies increases?

https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43191.pdf Page 10 “Long-term population trends for the honey bee, the most important managed pollinator, are demonstrably downward.”

Cite the whole context of that quote! They're referring to trends since the 1940s.

The varroa mite literally wiped out the feral honeybee population in the US. There are no more North American feral honeybees! Of course the long-term population trend is downward!

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