More Bad Buzz for Bees: Record Number of Honeybee Colonies Died Last Winter:
Bee colony death continues to rise. According to the Bee Informed Partnership's latest survey, released this week, U.S. beekeepers lost nearly 40% of their honeybee colonies last winter — the greatest reported winter hive loss since the partnership started its surveys 13 years ago. The total annual loss was slightly above average.
The survey included responses from nearly 4,700 beekeepers managing almost 320,000 hives, making up about 12% of total managed honey-producing colonies in the United States.
Bee decline has many causes, including decreasing crop diversity, poor beekeeping practices and loss of habitat. Pesticides weaken bees' immune systems and can kill them. Varroa mites (full, ominous species name: Varroa destructor) latch onto honeybees and suck their "fat body" tissue[pdf], stunting and weakening them and potentially causing entire colonies to collapse.
"Beekeepers are trying their best to keep [mites] in check, but it's really an arms race," says Nathalie Steinhauer, science coordinator for the Bee Informed Partnership and co-author of the report ([Dennis] vanEngelsdorp is also an author). "That's concerning, because we know arms races don't usually end well."
Steinhauer says Varroa mites are the "number one concern" around wintertime. They've become harder to control, she says, because some of the tools that beekeepers have been using — chemical strips that attract and kill mites, essential oils and organic acids — are losing their efficacy.
Pollinators are responsible for one of every three bites of food we take, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. Most of these pollinators are domesticated honeybees. They have become essential for many flowering crops, including blueberries, almonds and cherries. Wild insects can't be relied on to pollinate hundreds of acres of these crops, so fruit and nut producers call in commercial honeybee colonies instead.
(Score: 2) by Captival on Thursday June 20 2019, @10:38PM (4 children)
Was there also a record number of new colonies in the summer? Last time I visited the grocery store, honey was as cheap as it always has been.
(Score: 5, Informative) by NewNic on Thursday June 20 2019, @10:46PM
That's because the home was either:
1. From China
2. Fake
3. Both of the above.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Thursday June 20 2019, @10:48PM (1 child)
s/home/honey/
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 21 2019, @04:01PM
The pathname would be:
/home/honey
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday June 21 2019, @05:12AM
It was a guy in a Buddhist t-short going round introducing the mites deliberately as part of a plot to lure an Arab Sheikh to the US to kidnap him.
I know it sounds like a plot from some TV detective series, but I saw it on TV so it must be true.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @10:51PM
An older beekeeper paid us for a "Bee lease" on our land for awhile. His answer (in the US) to the mites problem was to order some chemical treatment from Australia via the internet, couldn't get it through normal retail/wholesale channels due to it being banned in the US, but customs on international packages is a joke so he never had a problem. Anyway, soak a piece of rag in this stuff, drop it in the hive and the workers will tear it to bits and remove it, in the process getting the chemical all soaked into their fuzz and killing the mites.
Yes, this is in the same hives where they collect the honey. Yes, he sells (well, he sold, but others sell) this honey to all kinds of customers from bakeries through boutique designer honey stands. Retail, online, you name it. The more scrupulous beekeepers won't sell their honey as organic when they use chemicals like that, but... when nobody is testing the honey and organic sells for a significantly higher margin, you do the math.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @10:56PM (5 children)
While commercial bees are a significant source of today's pollination, with a little effort toward habitat creation/preservation near the fields, natural pollinators (bees, and flying insects of all kinds) can perform as well as the commercial honeymakers.
We recently grew some sunflowers and drew some wild bees out of the nearby creek to pollinate them. While our mowed yard doesn't collect too many flying insects - if we leave a patch wild, it will grow all kinds of flowering weeds and attract all kinds of flying / pollinating bugs.
Not saying that we shouldn't try to save the commercial bees, but I am saying we should think of diversifying back to a more natural mix of pollinators by keeping some habitat for them near, and spread within, the commercial cropland.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 20 2019, @11:47PM
I'm with you on that. We should encourage wasps, butterflies, wild bees, and all the other critters that do the same jobs as bees. Of all the "global warming" alarmism being spread around, the disappearance of pollinators probably concerns me most. Few people even know where their food comes from, so it's not surprising that few people understand how important pollination is.
When people are reduced to walking around the fields and orchards, manually pollinating their food plants, then mankind is pretty screwed.
http://www.beeginnerbeekeeper.com/hand-pollinating-fruit-trees-in-china/ [beeginnerbeekeeper.com]
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday June 21 2019, @12:27AM (3 children)
Clear conclusion: Replace lawns with wildflower plantings (assuming they aren't being replaced by organized gardens). Packs of seeds are cheap and easy to come by, and a quick toss of them will make things rather pretty. Plus you don't have to mow it. Unfortunately, there are lots of city ordinances and homeowners juntas across the US that make that sort of thing illegal. I'm unclear who decided that trimmed grass lawn [landbridge.eco] was more desirable than wildflowers [pinimg.com], but if we're going to improve things for bees and other insects it would be a good idea to change those laws / HOA rules.
I mean, it's weird enough that we dedicate a whole bunch of conveniently-located land to no useful purpose, and then put tons of time and energy into keeping it "nice" by standards that were made up less than a century ago, but to do that when it could quite literally make it impossible for us to eat is just lunacy.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 21 2019, @03:08AM
I've done the wild yard thing, and it's not very nice to go for a walk in, but a mix of cleared field and wild area is a very nice thing, particularly if you don't like looking at your neighbors - a 6' unmowed strip will grow up to block the view pretty well.
I'm seriously considering widening the patch that our robot mower is kept out of so we can have more tall growth stuff - it's hard to keep a big garden cleared of weeds, but if the garden's purpose is to grow weeds...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 21 2019, @03:10AM (1 child)
Good luck doing anything with HOAs - you're dealing with a very small groups of generally very small minds, no amount of rational discourse will ever change an HOA's course.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday June 21 2019, @11:40AM
I called them "homeowners juntas", with the implication of petty dictatorships, for a reason.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Thursday June 20 2019, @11:47PM (1 child)
Got a colony of bees interrupting your baseball game? Kill em all and vacuum up the corpses. Fucking assholes.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 21 2019, @06:34AM
The Sacramento Bee covered that one. For obvious reasons?
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608061622/https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article231157053.html [archive.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday June 21 2019, @06:47AM
There was a segment on the news last night about pesticides. I had no idea that your average non-bio farmer sprays his crops with pesticides "just in case". Not if there's a problem, but always. Ok, maybe I'm naive, but I would have assumed simply cost cutting would prevent this. Anyway.
Given the massive scale of industrial farming, that's a hell of a lot of pesticide going into the ecosystem [ourworldindata.org], most of it for no good reason. Is it any surprise that insects are struggling?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday June 21 2019, @02:36PM
As statistics go, having seen three bees/wasp dead or very weak this season, vs 1 last season, vs none in the preceding four decades, means very little. But if I form my opinion based on my experience, and everyone else does the same with theirs, we will be statically right. As for me the suggestion is to stock on cans. I tend to consider that WWIII has begun in 65 and fought with unusual weapons, wombs, weather, energy and information.
Account abandoned.