Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by tptacek » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 12:05 AM UTC

will_brown wrote: post #90

tptacek wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully: come on. Once again, these aren't hard numbers to get. The varroa mite outbreak began in 1987 . Feral honeybees were probably effectively eradicated by the end of the 1990s. Now, look up the introduction and adoption dates for neonicotinoids. I know approximately fuck-all about beekeeping. It should not be this easy for me to rebut arguments about neonic toxicity, but I appear to be holding my own on ap…

Honestly, I don't expect a response, but getting the Global numbers and Canada's numbers on colonies by year isn't a simple Google Search. I am not a beekeeper either but for a time I did sell honey, up to 65,000 units per order and so I am familiar with USDA annual reports and USDA Honey Production Survey. In fairness I seem to be one of the only people in the thread not challenging you about the impact of the mites…

The most widespread neonicotinoids, like the clothianidin in seed-treated rapeseed, weren't introduced until 2002.

Neonics aren't the reason varrao mites wiped out feral honeybees. The timeline for that argument just doesn't work.

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

#92

Post by unclebucknasty » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #12

unclebucknasty wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that neonicotinoids are causing an increase in active hive numbers? I'm guessing that's not your assertion. But, of course, the argument you appear to be making is just as invalid.

No, I'm suggesting there may be no causal link at all.

But your argument essentially posits that there is a link in the other direction.

That is, since bee populations are on the rise, neonics are not harmful to them.

You could just as easily draw the conclusion that neonics are helping bees.

Neither conclusion is valid.

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

#93

Post by Joof » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 1:46 AM UTC

mintplant wrote: post #47

Joof wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so lets make bees more resistant to Neonics. :P

And then force it through the population with a gene drive? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive I'm sure there won't be any negative consequences ;)

Impossible! Outside of gene drives (which sound a little dangerous...), I really want to do some simple CRISPR projects (I have a specific idea in mind; although not for hacker news ;). Too bad you need a lab, even if it's probably a good idea to limit hobbyists.

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

#94

Post by jly » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #80

jly wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is true, then it's likely just due to more beekeeping activity - commercial and hobby - due to the awareness of this issue and rapidly growing agricultural demands. Beekeepers tend to use annual colony losses for whatever reasons as a measure of overall apiary health. These are increasing (sometimes dramatically). For example, a commercial apiary may count 10% as normal and expected losses overwintering, whil…

No, overwintering losses are at ~24%. The numbers are public; you can just Google them.

Numbers vary depending on the survey and most surveys only include maybe 1/3 of commercially managed hives, to start.

Overwinter losses are probably around your number for the last several years but all-year losses are much higher. The USDA stated for 2013-2014, for example, higher summer losses than winter for the first time, for an annual total of 42.1% *

Regardless of the exact number, my point is still valid in discussing your original question.

[*] http://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2015/...

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

#95

Post by jly » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 10:43 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #77

ameliaikeda wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an amateur beekeeper, I can tell you that honeybees _are_ wild, in a sense. A captured swarm is just a wild colony with the queen trapped in an excluder box in your hive. They can't be domesticated, and containing them after they swarm involves tricking the bees into thinking they are the ones making a decision (you can turn their hive 90 degrees after they swarm in summer and they will return in most cases, assum…

I did a little more clicking around, and learned (wait for it) that native feral honeybees are probably gone in the UK as well. Honeybees in both the UK and North America are livestock, not wildlife.

Honeybees are indeed a non-native species to the US, but that doesn't mean there are not feral honeybees. They can survive just fine in the wild without us, as they did before they were domesticated, and they continue to do so as descendants of domesticated apis melifera and other species. This is the same as the wild boar which has existed in a feral state for centuries in the southern US, originally from domesticated pigs brought from Europeans. Calling apis melifera 'not wildlife' does not seem anywhere near accurate.

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

#96

Post by jly » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 10:49 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #36

Ratufa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you talk about "increase in beehives", are you referring to hives that are managed by a beekeeper, or hives created by wild bees, and not managed by a human? When you talk about "fewer live bees", are you referring to wild bees, or bees in a managed hive? In my previous post, I was only referring to managed hives.

There are no feral honeybees in the US. They were wiped out, not by neonics, but by the varroa mite, 30 years ago. (Before we colonized this place, there were no wild honeybees: they're an introduced species). Honeybees are livestock, not wildlife.

No feral honeybees? I can attest from personal experience down here in Texas there are a lot of wild apis melifera and many other honey bee species doing just fine without us. Maybe your definition of 'feral' isn't the same as mine, but this is plain wrong.

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

#97

Post by jly » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 10:56 PM UTC

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…

>> Is there a source you can find that shows neonicotinoids as used in the wild being calamitous for bees?

Well, the BBC article plus several studies it links to are some sources to start with. Right?

This article deals with non-honey or bumble bee species so it is not attempting to make any assertions about a neonic-honeybee health link.

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

#98

Post by jly » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 11:04 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #86

will_brown wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is not clear, that is exactly what I suggest. Specifically, I acknowledge the devastating impact of the mites, but believe because the patterns (I am aware of) suggest more. I am thoroughly interested in the global data if it suggests the U.S. Honey Production Survey data is an anomaly in terms of net negative colonies after introduction Neonicotinoids.

Respectfully: come on. Once again, these aren't hard numbers to get. The varroa mite outbreak began in 1987 . Feral honeybees were probably effectively eradicated by the end of the 1990s. Now, look up the introduction and adoption dates for neonicotinoids. I know approximately fuck-all about beekeeping. It should not be this easy for me to rebut arguments about neonic toxicity, but I appear to be holding my own on ap…

The BBC article deals with the nearly 20k species of bee that are NOT honeybees and are NOT affected in nearly the same way by varroa, showing a clear neonicotinoid link to reducing numbers. Linking honeybee losses to this study is not accurate.

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

#99

Post by jly » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 11:05 PM UTC

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?

I don't think you read the linked article. It deals with only wild bee species and their decline.

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

#100

Post by jly » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 11:20 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #76

smallnamespace wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an academic researcher so I don't have the raw data that you want, but I think it's worth not missing the forest for the trees. Bee populations have been demonstrably stressed for a very long time, and CCD and other more recent developments are yet another sign. The need for beekeepers to aggressively split hives is a sign that things are going very badly for them, even if we manage to raise the number of col…

I'm sorry, but respectfully, you've provided neither forest nor trees. I'm not an academic researcher either, but I feel as if I'm one of the few people on this thread that has heard of a varroa mite, or knows apis mellifera's actual role in the North American ecosystem. All I did was look stuff up. Can't everyone else do the same thing? The 2006 date cited for CCD isn't the government acknowledging CCD. It's the fir…

I appreciate your enthusiasm for this topic, but, respectfully, you are not an expert either and you're spreading a lot of incorrect information. It's clear you have little understanding other than what you can quickly google. Yes, we know about varroa. Many of us are beekeepers and have seen this firsthand and are plugged into local communities where we share data on hive populations and research.

Honeybee populations have not stabilized, although it is true that wintering losses have stabilized a lot in the last several years. Summer losses have been horrible in a worrying way, and we just don't understand why - this was unheard of in decades past. CCD specifically has been observed less in recent years but overall annual losses are not stabilizing and are far higher than economically acceptable. My data is from the USDA.

The overall message is that something (not all varroa) is still changing things now, and we don't quite understand it yet. Yes, the introduction of neonics also corresponds heavily to the worst of the varroa period and that should be taken into account. It doesn't mean varroa explains away every other problem.

The linked BBC article is only about non-honeybee species.