It is great and currently necessary we use them the way we do. It makes one wonder in the age of AI and evolving farm practices, can we start finding ways to cultivate already-climate-adapted native bees to do the work? Can we leverage adaptations for specific crops?
I get it that honeybees work great at pollinating monoculture fields, etc., but that does not change the fact we are perpetuating a square peg in round hole problem and pushing it very very far right now, at greater and greater cost, all while climate change is fighting us.
looping__lui 50 minutes ago [-]
I suppose honey bees are not native in North America pretty much the same way as the human species?
I don’t quite understand why there seems to be a pretty persistent thread around “honey bees are invasive and harm the ecosystem by stealing all the food from the native bees and doing all their pollination; that’s why they decline” - when at the same time the use of pesticides is so rampant that insects are literally gone entirely.
Honey bees are not great and reliable pollinators btw.
So the solution is: more genetically modified crops? More pesticides?
Unless “we need to stop our use of pesticides and we should also acknowledge that honey bees are an invasive species and consider making changes to the way we do monocultures” are in the same sentence this entire “honey bees are invasive” argument just feels super weird. Pesticides kill native pollinators. It’s not the honey bees.
Edit: and just to be clear - honey bees do not survive in the wild by themselves anymore due to varroa mites. They essentially depend on humans to protect them. That’s what the entire purpose of this article is about. So, if humans stopped keeping honey bees - they’d have a pretty hard time surviving in the wild on their own.
mastermage 6 minutes ago [-]
An idea that sprang to mind and please point me out at which points its unrealistic and why because I am talking completely out of my ass here. If we want to reduce mono culture but we still need to somehow figure out how to provide humanity. Could large scale vertical farms, in Green Houses reduce the footprint of monocultures? By being more productive year round? Or is that just technolgist delusions of mine?
gadders 52 minutes ago [-]
>>Honeybees are not native to North America.
Neither are horses.
I guess the issue is you don't get honey with the native bees.
colechristensen 24 minutes ago [-]
A quite similar horse species went extinct in North America ~10,000 years ago likely due to humans.
The horse ancestor species come from the Americas and migrated to Eurasia over the bearing land bridge.
Horses were only missing from North America for 10,000 of the last 50 million years.
Of all the examples to pick from, seeing GP picked horse made me wonder if GP was doing it for gits and shiggles.
NoMoreNicksLeft 39 minutes ago [-]
You could pick up a catalog from any of these places and find half a dozen different species of bees to cultivate for pollination. Blue mason bees come to mind. Anything that's even slightly domesticatable is being pursued. Some of these bees are loners too, perfect for the hipster crowd.
halflife 1 hours ago [-]
If they are not native, how did plant propagate seeds? Flies? Wasps? Butterflies?
EdwardDiego 57 minutes ago [-]
Native bees. Apis mellifera are introduced bees across most of the world.
But yes, there are other pollinators like butterflies, moths, flies, birds, etc.
roboben 2 hours ago [-]
The hard truth these days is that the work of bee keeping is like 80% keeping the mites in check. Plus all current treatments render the honey inedible so you can only do it at the end of the season.
agilob 2 hours ago [-]
To add, varroa quickly gains immunity to the pharmaceutical treatment we have, so the same medication cannot be used 2 years in a row. Most popular treatment from late 90s that used to kill 99% of varroa is now completely ineffective.
It was explained to me this is well planned and solved in Czechia. Varroa treatment is refunded my the government, but only one type of medication every 6 months. It's cheaper for beekeepers to use whatever the government gives them for free, than use something else. And the medication is free only for a few weeks, so everyone will use it at the same time.
shevy-java 2 hours ago [-]
No. The mites are not what is killing the bees.
And, by the way - natural pathogens exist in just about any population. These very, very rarely led to extinction. There is a media trend to claim the mites are at fault. This reminds me of prior fault yielding e. g. "mad cow disease" - and then the media also stopped doing any further investigation at that point. It's as if they have break points where you can not go past those points. Now it is the mites that get blamed.
wizzwizz4 4 minutes ago [-]
People who believe these types of things tend to get their information from the same places. Which podcasts do you listen to?
MrLeap 2 hours ago [-]
Lotta unsubstantiated claims you're making there.
kelseyfrog 2 hours ago [-]
The negative government prior is unusually attractive.
Coneylake 5 minutes ago [-]
Another terrible MCU spin-off
tamimio 11 minutes ago [-]
Kinda related, but in my house I don’t kill spiders, as long as they are in the corners they can live rent free while cleaning other bugs. Before, one time I went and killed all of them, in less than a week I started seeing sliverfish and similar bugs, I realized I messed up the natural order, so I just keep em now!
blooalien 3 hours ago [-]
Some potentially seriously good news there if it all pans out the way it sounds like it might. Fingers crossed for the bees!
shevy-java 2 hours ago [-]
This assumes the mites are what kills the bees. What is that asssumption is flawed?
EdwardDiego 53 minutes ago [-]
Then all the scientists who study apiary are wrong and someone in the HN comments knows better than all of them.
Congratulations, I look forward to your Nobel prize.
fodkodrasz 2 hours ago [-]
Nah, it cannot happen that Big Agro's poisons are to fault...
niksmather 2 hours ago [-]
Pesticides are bad for bees, but Varroa is too. Until Varroa arrived in Australia the bees there didn't suffer from colony collapse, despite high pesticide use.
EdwardDiego 54 minutes ago [-]
Big Ag was already using those poisons before varroa, so if it was the cause, you would've seen it manifest before varroa.
somenameforme 5 minutes ago [-]
It seems that varroa were first discovered in North America in 1987. [1] Glyphosate use at that time was around 4,500 metric tons. By 2014 we were up to 125,000 metric tons [2]. There was an exponential increase coming after 1996 when glyphosate resistant GMO crops became a thing. I don't have an opinion on this topic one way or the other, but there seem to be quite a lot of negative correlates since then, and this is just another one. Of course correlation doesn't mean causation, but you can't completely dismiss it.
So what's it going to do to the honey? Will we have spider venom laced honey?
hyperionultra 2 hours ago [-]
As article suggest - it is fully biodegradable. I suppose venom has some short half-life. And since peptide is isolated, not full chain toxin, it should be harmless to humans.
gadders 47 minutes ago [-]
I'd imagine eating it has a different effect than having it directly enter the bloodstream as well.
karlkloss 56 minutes ago [-]
A lot of people might become allergic to honey, and never know why.
mjmas 2 hours ago [-]
Probably, but not at any meaningful concentration.
shevy-java 2 hours ago [-]
Still the honeybees keep on dying ...
Perhaps it is time to stop blaming the mites for the decline of the honeybees.
Rendered at 08:07:26 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-32194-8
It is great and currently necessary we use them the way we do. It makes one wonder in the age of AI and evolving farm practices, can we start finding ways to cultivate already-climate-adapted native bees to do the work? Can we leverage adaptations for specific crops?
I get it that honeybees work great at pollinating monoculture fields, etc., but that does not change the fact we are perpetuating a square peg in round hole problem and pushing it very very far right now, at greater and greater cost, all while climate change is fighting us.
I don’t quite understand why there seems to be a pretty persistent thread around “honey bees are invasive and harm the ecosystem by stealing all the food from the native bees and doing all their pollination; that’s why they decline” - when at the same time the use of pesticides is so rampant that insects are literally gone entirely.
Honey bees are not great and reliable pollinators btw.
So the solution is: more genetically modified crops? More pesticides?
Unless “we need to stop our use of pesticides and we should also acknowledge that honey bees are an invasive species and consider making changes to the way we do monocultures” are in the same sentence this entire “honey bees are invasive” argument just feels super weird. Pesticides kill native pollinators. It’s not the honey bees.
Edit: and just to be clear - honey bees do not survive in the wild by themselves anymore due to varroa mites. They essentially depend on humans to protect them. That’s what the entire purpose of this article is about. So, if humans stopped keeping honey bees - they’d have a pretty hard time surviving in the wild on their own.
Neither are horses.
I guess the issue is you don't get honey with the native bees.
The horse ancestor species come from the Americas and migrated to Eurasia over the bearing land bridge.
Horses were only missing from North America for 10,000 of the last 50 million years.
Of all the examples to pick from, seeing GP picked horse made me wonder if GP was doing it for gits and shiggles.
But yes, there are other pollinators like butterflies, moths, flies, birds, etc.
It was explained to me this is well planned and solved in Czechia. Varroa treatment is refunded my the government, but only one type of medication every 6 months. It's cheaper for beekeepers to use whatever the government gives them for free, than use something else. And the medication is free only for a few weeks, so everyone will use it at the same time.
And, by the way - natural pathogens exist in just about any population. These very, very rarely led to extinction. There is a media trend to claim the mites are at fault. This reminds me of prior fault yielding e. g. "mad cow disease" - and then the media also stopped doing any further investigation at that point. It's as if they have break points where you can not go past those points. Now it is the mites that get blamed.
Congratulations, I look forward to your Nobel prize.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa
[2] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5044953/
Perhaps it is time to stop blaming the mites for the decline of the honeybees.