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

The bee that everyone wants to save

naturalist.bearblog.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 92 posts

Re: The bee that everyone wants to save

#81

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #10
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

TL; DR Honeybees aren’t native to the Americas. Bumblebees are. And bumblebees get outcompeted by honeybees. That’s terrible, because bumblebees promote plant biodiversity in a way generalist honeybees do not. Putting a honeybee hive in your yard or on your balcony is fine. But it’s agriculture, not conservation.

There are lots of native bees getting wiped out by Varroa destructor carried viral infections. The imported hybrids used in agriculture are more productive, and are currently being bred to have the desirable trait of cleaning/nibbling the legs off mites. Bumblebees do just fine in most places, as they go after my geraniums like a fool with a hole-punch every year. We have several local variety, and they are an import…

Oh, to be clear, I have nothing against beekeepers. As I said, it’s fine to have a backyard apiary. But it’s also important to know that it’s having an impact on the local bumblebee population. Depending on where you are, that could be fine or it could be stressing an endangered species. (I’m in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We’re advised to avoid honeybees.)

Re: The bee that everyone wants to save

#82

Post by mattmaroon »

pfdietz wrote: post #60
chasil wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those ships have literally sailed, centuries ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange

Invasives are an ongoing and escalating problem.

Which is solid evidence that honey bees have little to do with the problem.

Re: The bee that everyone wants to save

#83

Post by datahack »

I do very much dislike that the concerns of the domesticated bee are brushed aside in this piece, as they are quite legitimate.

It, of course, is trying to espouse that we protect the solitary and other wild bees, and I agree with them about that. It’s very, very important.

Nevertheless, this is a case of both not either / or being the right position. Why should we be advocating for one and not the other, or really in fact all flying insects, especially given their recent catastrophic declines.

Re: The bee that everyone wants to save

#84

Post by ilamont »

Modified3019 wrote: post #27
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you “build colonies” for native species?

Yes, though you need to know what sort of nesting sites they like, and what sources of food they need. Many native bees need certain plants to get the nutritional profile they are adapted for, and don’t do so well on nothing but dandelions and typical ornamental flowers. They also need food sources throughout their active time. For mason and leaf cutter bees, a box sheltered from rain and filled with Japanese knotwee…

> Japanese knotweed tubes (don’t grow it yourself, it’s highly invasive)

Last year I was lamenting to a neighbor that bamboo doesn't survive the harsh winters where we live. He disputed that.

"There's some growing down the road, next to the ditch," he said. "It comes back every year. It's everywhere."

I was wondering what the heck he was talking about and then I realized it was Japanese knotweed. The segmented branches do look like thin bamboo, and he claimed that at one time it was sold at the local garden center as "bamboo."

Re: The bee that everyone wants to save

#85

Post by skyberrys »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #11
skyberrys wrote: post #8

My garden is full of fleabane flowers in heaping piles. I wonder if that helps native pollinators or if I am providing flowers for honey bees instead.

Planting a variety of local wild flowers that bloom at different times over summer is the best assistance people can offer the little creatures. Best regards, =3

I actually plant local wildflowers all around the public paths near me, those get much better sunlight than my own garden. I've managed to plant so many golden poppies now that I frequently see strangers stopping to photograph them, I feel so happy when I see it. I had a great patch of lupines going too but some sort of aphid got loose in the thick patch and killed them all. I was so sad.

I try to plant other types of flowers in my own garden, it's just that I have 1000's of fleabane and like 200 others, my little corner seems to be perfect for fleabane to thrive.

Re: The bee that everyone wants to save

#86

Post by tomjakubowski »

jojobas wrote: post #39
moebrowne wrote: post #20

> The honeybee is not endangered. It never was. There are several severe threats to honey bees which without human intervention would cause a significant number of hives to be lost. There's the varroa mite and the things it carries like deformed wing virus, then there is the increasingly prevalent Asian hornet which European honey bees are unable to deal with, and colony collapse disorder where the bees literally dis…

To add, most farming relies precisely on honeybee for pollination, and losing 2/3 of them would be quite devastating. Of course nobody cars about wild bees, our lives don't depend on them nearly as much.

Is that really true? My layman's understanding was that ~10-20% of the calories in a typical American diet comes from crops which need pollinators: grains (which feed livestock too), legumes, root vegetables, leafy greens, mostly can be grown without them, using self pollination or wind pollination.

Re: The bee that everyone wants to save

#88

Post by jojobas »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #86
jojobas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add, most farming relies precisely on honeybee for pollination, and losing 2/3 of them would be quite devastating. Of course nobody cars about wild bees, our lives don't depend on them nearly as much.

Is that really true? My layman's understanding was that ~10-20% of the calories in a typical American diet comes from crops which need pollinators: grains (which feed livestock too), legumes, root vegetables, leafy greens, mostly can be grown without them, using self pollination or wind pollination.

I mean, of those that do require insect pollination. Apples/pear family, almonds/cherries/plums, cucumbers/melons, some others in seed production (carrots). There are only few examples where non-honeybee pollinators are needed, like tomatoes in greenhouses (otherwise wind is enough).

Re: The bee that everyone wants to save

#89

Post by chasil »

eszed wrote: post #56
neonnoodle wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Breeding more” bees is not as trivial as raising other animals, because bee reproduction depends on hive stability. Other animals are kept fully enclosed in captivity and can be artificially inseminated in some cases. Bees are semi-wild and have to be free to leave the hive to forage, and if they don’t return or if the hive collapses, you can’t “breed more.”

Fun fact: queen bees can be artificially inseminated, and most commercial queens are. Beekeepers prefer naturally-inseminated queens, because they're stronger, but "nature" can't keep up with commercial demand. You're correct about "breeding more" not being trivial, but they do it on an industrial scale. In really broad strokes: in late winter, in preparation for pollination season, they feed their hives intensively…

Does the pollination vastly increase the disease vector exposure, both for the contracted hive and all the insects near it?

Re: The bee that everyone wants to save

#90

Post by drzaiusx11 »

Been beekeeping for a couple decades now, and during that short time period I've watched first hand what we're up against to save polinators and insects in general in the coming decades. Overuse of pesticides, a massive decline in foragable land, the unchecked introduction of various predators and associated pathogens from global trade and a warming planet are just a few that come to mind.

I tend to agree that the news cycles put too great a focus on honeybees in particular when discussing the decline of pollinators worldwide. However, I understand why the focus is there; they're an easy to point to example that the average person is familiar with, doubly so since most folks use honeybee byproducts regularly.

That said, insect populations are declining at a staggering 1-2% year over year rate. 40% of all insect species are endangered. Rates are declining significantly higher in both North America and Europe, concentrated near agricultual centers. There is some truth in honeybees outcompeting native species for increasingly scarce resources, but putting our blame on the honeybee is missing the forest for the trees.

Post reply on HN