Agriculture's dependence on pollinators, including both wild and domesticated bees, has increased fourfold since the 1960s. A recent study of these pollinators found that they provide up to $577 billion a year of crops, half of which comes from wild pollinators. These ratios underline the severity of their collapsing numbers. More than a third are facing extinction.
Gemma Cranston, head of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership team that participated in the study, warned that "less than half the companies sampled know which of the raw materials they source depend on pollinators", adding that there needs to be more research to get the full picture.
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Plight of the bees hits unaware businesses
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Plight of the Bees Hits Unaware Businesses
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @02:44PM (11 children)
The real question is this: Is this ever-collapsing part of the labor force showing up in the bottom line? Is the market converting the death of these bees into an economic signal that cannot be ignored by anyone (e.g., is the price of downstream commodities rising inordinately)?
If no, then why not? Governmental price caps? Why is the signal being lost in the noise?
That's the real question.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 17 2018, @03:57PM (2 children)
The signal is being lost in the noise, because to many businesses are insulated from upstream suppliers. Face it, we're talking food here. Restaurants, institutional kitchens, and home makers alike, are insulated from the production of food products. How many Americans have ever processed their own meat, even in small quantities? The only animals they have ever killed, were dogs, or squirrels that ran into traffic. If they've ever cultivated a plant, it was likely a flower on the patio, or a little shrub in the yard. The only people getting the signal, are those people who are directly affected. Bee keepers, farmers, direct purchasers of agricultural products, and maybe some crafts people who use beeswax.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @04:31PM (1 child)
Uh, wow. Way to miss the point. I believe GP was trying to ask why colony collapse disorder (syndrome?) hasn't made the price of food go up. Perhaps GP meant to demonstrate that the article is pointless environmentalist crap. Then I imagine he'll use whatever response to suggest that the reason environmentalist concerns aren't addressed is market distortion due to a violently imposed monopoly.
Because if we implemented anarcho-capitalism, we'd be living in a utopia! (And I suppose GP figures he'd get to marry some girl children. If only we didn't have a violently imposed monopoly!)
There. Hopefully that gets to the bottom of Mr. VIM's point so we can move on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @04:38PM
Hold fast, fellow AC. Don't look away from the Truth.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday April 17 2018, @04:47PM (4 children)
What I have read is that the cost is essentially being borne by beekeepers who are able at some cost to reproduce colonies by fission with the purchase of a new queen: " rel="url2html-7104">https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-the-bee-pocalypse/
I have zero personal experience and can't comment as to the accuracy of that information.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @05:14PM (1 child)
Are they being subsidized by the Government?
Or, are they just Angels? Something doesn't make sense.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday April 17 2018, @06:24PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 17 2018, @07:00PM (1 child)
Beekeepers certainly are trying to keep their hives healthy, and it is possible to fission a new hive, but you can't just buy new queens if the queens don't exist. Apparently, there are methods available to artificially stimulate queen production, but it's definitely real work.
One other aspect of all this: Farmers growing bee-pollenating plants sometimes contract with beekeepers to bring their bees to that particular field. The beekeepers have been having to be very vigilant about avoiding pesticides thought to be related to colony collapse, including sometimes testing the crops themselves to make sure that the contract won't kill their bees. The cost of that vigilance of course gets passed on to the farmers, which in turn gets somewhat reflected in crop prices, which in turn gets somewhat reflected at the grocery store.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Wednesday April 18 2018, @03:19AM
Hives normally overproduce queens, so that's not the real problem. The problem is keeping the workers alive. This probably means keeping them away from persistent insecticides. These may or may not directly kill off the bees, but they weaken them and make the hives subject to infection by mites.
So what you need to do is raise your new hives in an area free of pesticides...which usually translates as "broad spectrum insecticides". This is becoming increasingly difficult, as bees do not willingly contain themselves to a small area, and pesticides are increasingly becoming persistent, and even spreading in the water supplies. You might also look into the causes of amphibian declines...multiple pesticides each at a sub-critical dose can have strongly potentiated effects.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by darkfeline on Tuesday April 17 2018, @07:42PM (2 children)
Supply chain signal propagation is notoriously slow. There's a common introductory business game (one example [1]), where everyone splits up into a bunch of teams to simulate the various parts of the supply chain (retailers, warehouse, manufacturer, etc), the teams pass around cards to send signals about supply/demand, and you play it for a few rounds. The supply chain responds very slowly to changes in supply/demand and screws everything up.
It's like global warming; by the time the signals have appeared, the horse has not only left the barn, but has been caught and sold into someone else's barn.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game [wikipedia.org]
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(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @10:26PM (1 child)
When all you're doing is relaying information about supply and demand, then of course it will screw up; that's why socialism always devolves into dysfunctional breadlines.
However, people don't fuck around with money.
They will pass a burden on as quick as they get it, unless there is some strange, distorting force at play, and it's that change in the exchange of money (not information about supply and demand) which will cause an economy to re-organize itself.
Damn. This is another reason to be wary of MBAs.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday April 19 2018, @06:44PM
That strange, distorting force is called latency, and even very simple systems, such as a robot using gyro sensor input to walk, can experience negative emergent effects from latency. The larger and more complex the system, the greater the effect, and the global economy is a pretty big and complex system.
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(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday April 17 2018, @03:25PM (1 child)
Kill the bees, we gots profit to make!
We don' need no stinkin' food.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday April 17 2018, @09:40PM
Soylent green does not need bees :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 17 2018, @03:36PM (10 children)
Actually, he retired (age 70) from beekeeping two years ago, but was working well into the "crisis." He had challenges with varroa mites, but apparently there's this insecticide you can order online from Australia that works wonders, just soak a piece of rag in it, drop it in the hive (yes, the same hive the honey comes from), and the workers will shred it to bits and carry it out - and in the process coat themselves and kill their mites.
Of course, this totally circumvents any notion of national control over distribution and use of pesticides and how they might affect the food supply, but I'm sure he's the only farmer anywhere that did something like that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @06:55PM (7 children)
That might kill the mites but will it cure the bees? Most research on the subject I've seen suggests insecticides are at least part of the problem.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 17 2018, @08:08PM (5 children)
He was pretty successful (in Central Florida) with just the mite treatment. We actually met when he took a bee lease on our property, which is mostly palmetto/oak woods with an orange grove about a half mile away. So - he wasn't near any intensively pesticide treated areas. Some of his bees naturalized on to our land and are still there today.
I forget the exact name, but there's one insecticide in particular that has been linked to CCD, banned in Europe, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday April 18 2018, @03:27AM (3 children)
I believe that's the neocorticoid pesticide. A part of the problem with that one is that it's persistent. Another part is that it's a slow contact poison...so it can get carried back to the hive.
For an analogy, consider the way ants are killed with a syrup based on sweetened arsenic. But I really think a large part of the problem can be traced to a multi-drug interaction with the neocorticoid pesticide being only the most recent component added. I suspect that by itself and in isolation it wouldn't cause the perceived effects at the typically encountered dosage.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday April 18 2018, @10:11AM (1 child)
I think you mean neonicotinoids not neocorticoids. They are a group of pesticides based on nicotine.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday April 18 2018, @05:22PM
Yeah, that looks better. I couldn't remember the exact term, and for some reason when I looked in Google it didn't show up.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 18 2018, @11:51AM
Which is how it passes safety testing... then we get to argue about methods for 20 years while Bayer makes bank on it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @05:38PM
Are you talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday April 18 2018, @03:23AM
I'm rather certain that insecticides are a major part of the problem, but do remember that different insecticides affect different insects differently. This one *apparently* affects mites but not bees. Perhaps.
The problem comes with multi-drug interactions...which it's really difficult to avoid, since bees don't just sit around in one place.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday April 18 2018, @10:21AM (1 child)
Mate, we're more careful with poisons than you yanks. If you can order it online from here you could probably drink the stuff.
My guess would be something in the pyrethrum line. It was originally isolated from some african flower, so bees are possibly resistant to it.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 18 2018, @11:58AM
Whatever it was, it wasn't licensed for use in the USA - now, I believe you're right that it's probably safer than anything Bayer puts out, but the point is: regulations are a farce, and it could just as easily be a lead-mercury-arsenic combo mixed with DDT.
Anecdote: back as recently as the 1970s, they dusted cattle in Central Florida with arsenic to kill pests... there are some seriously toxic patches in the middle of the big ranches where they did that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]