US Beekeepers Lost 40 Percent of Honeybee Colonies Over Past Year, Survey Finds (theguardian.com) 151
Beekeepers across the U.S. lost four in 10 of their honeybee colonies over the past year, as the worst winter on record for tracked bee populations raised fresh concerns over the plight of the crucial pollinators. The Guardian reports: Over the past winter, 37% of honeybee colonies were lost to beekeepers, the worst winter decline recorded in the 13-year history of a nationwide survey aimed at charting bees' fortunes. Overall, 40% of colonies died off over the entire year to April, which is above the 38% average since the survey began. Researchers said the numbers were concerning given the intensive efforts to stem the loss of honeybees, which pollinate an estimated $15 billion in U.S. crops each year, enabling the farming of foods including apples, melons, cherries, almonds and blueberries. The latest survey included data from 4,700 beekeepers from all 50 states, capturing about 12% of the U.S.'s estimated 2.69 million managed colonies. Researchers behind the survey say it's in line with findings from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which keeps data on the remaining colonies.
40% isn't too bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Taken at face value 40% doesn't seem to be a problem. Taken as a trend:
33% died in 2016 https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
40% died in 2014 https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
And that's just slashdot stories, I didn't even search wider statistics. But one thing I've never seen is a story talking about the opposite of colony collapse.
Forget last year and 40%, what's the population like compared to 2009, and 1999?
Re:40% isn't too bad... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, there should be numbers for 2009, but the 40% is from a THIRTEEN year study, so 1999 is out of the range in question.
Looking at the study, the 40% losses were over the entire 13 years of the study, not just last year. And they seem to be among beekeepers who used bees for pollinating California almond groves.
Note further that the results only cover 23 States. It's not clear to what extent those 23 States are representative of the whole USA, or what fraction of the bee population those 23 States represent. Also, to what extent the numbers represent wild colonies is not clear....
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That's no substitute, cats are terrible at singing.
honeybees are not native to the Americas (Score:3)
Just a reminder, honeybees are not native to the Americas. They are an invasive species.
If you want an ecologically correct answer, 100% of the honeybees need to die to return the Americas to the ecology present before Europeans destroyed it.
Re:40% isn't too bad... (Score:4, Interesting)
The wild bee populations of course are going to be hurt by industrial bees. Wild chicken (called a grouse) populations are near non-existent too.
As far as the industrial colonies themselves... we pump industrial chickens, cows, and pigs with antibiotics. The wild populations have declined because there isnt much wilderness left. The industrial populations have their own, separate, issues. "Colony collapse disorder" is blamed on multiple things because it depends on if you are studying industrial populations or wild populations. The industrial populations appear to have a mite issue. Some sort of mite-targeting pesticide will be the solution to that. The wild populations? They will survive wherever wilderness is.
Re:40% isn't too bad... (Score:5, Interesting)
The industrial populations appear to have a mite issue. Some sort of mite-targeting pesticide will be the solution to that.
No, the pesticides are the problem.
Some smart beekeepers have used evolutionary techniques to breed mite-resistant hives, and these are the future stock of the industry.
Using the pesticides allows the mite-susceptible hives to persist and they get re-infested, allowing a purchase for the mite population.
cf. the recent Science Friday segment on honeybee research.
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Sorry Ivan, you misunderstood him. "Pesticide" includes all the chemicals that kill pests. That includes both things that kill insects, and also things that kill plants. Pesticide means insecticides, and herbicides. It doesn't just mean herbicides.
Maybe when it sounds like nonsense you're just too drunk to post?
Wild Honey Bees in the US? (Score:3)
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Lots of native bees seem to be having problems. I see way less bumble bees in the early spring then I did a decade or so ago and the early flowering berries seem to be suffering from it. The salmonberries this year are so few that the birds have got them all here. Huckleberries have been scarce the last few years too. Hard to say if due to lack of bees or weather. I'm at least 10 miles from any farms.
There's also a lot of problems with hungry bears, reports are almost double over last year and they're learn
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In Oregon salmonberries are doing fine, none of the huckleberry species are having problems. Three huckleberry species make up the dominant forest understory in much of the state, mixed with Oregon grape and salal.
Bumble bee populations are locally just fine. In the more arid parts of the region, their range is declining, but not their local numbers where they have good habitat. If your parks and open spaces are mostly mowed fields, and your mountains have been deforested, you'll no longer have many bumble
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I'm about a dozen miles north of the 49th and 50 miles east of the ocean in BC, thimbleberries just finished flowering. Nothing has changed in the local forest, which is about a 100 years old. It has been dry this year and the springs have been variable, warm, cold, warm. Just looked, there's very few salmon berries and the other day. I was checking out some huckleberries, small and few, though it is early here. Had some saskatoon berries today as well, small and way less then last year when I found the bus
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Most of the pollinating moths are daytime ones that look like gray or brown butterflies. Most people would just call them butterflies.
I wish I could find a good saskatoon patch down here.
Huckleberry flowers down here don't attract that many bees, they seem to mostly use tiny flies and wasps. The flowers are really small.
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Here, the huckleberries are one of the first to flower, which is why they attract the various bees. If I had more light, I'd plant some heather for them but I live in a forest and the heather dies.
Did look at some blackberries earlier, didn't notice any bees, but that might be timing.
With the moths, at this time or perhaps a bit later, the porch light used to be surrounded by a cloud of moths. That's stopped and now it's like one. That might be due to the switch to LED lighting.
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Wild doesn't mean "native species."
A feral honey bee colony is one that that swarmed from one that lived on a farm or in a backyard.
But a third generation colony is now merely a wild colony, not feral.
Just like, a stray cat is feral, but a[sic:silent o] opossum is wild, even though the opossum is introduced, and are descended from animals that were originally pets. But that was 150 years ago. They're not growing up as pets now, so they're wild, not feral.
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There are lots of wild [feral] honey bees in my town. The city doesn't kill them when they're in city-owned trees, such as the ones between the sidewalk and street, and in parks. If they're near people, they just put up a warning sign.
They're really healthy and stable. In the spring they come out 2-4 weeks after the farmed bees do; you can tell be when they start leaving the hive how much food storage they have. With nobody stealing their food, they're much healthier.
Mite infestations, unsurprisingly, go up
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"Taken at face value 40% doesn't seem to be a problem. "
Exactly. If a colony (or 50) are lost, you take a bee (or 50) feed it (or them) some royal jelly and presto you have a new queen (or 50) for new colonies.
Re:40% isn't too bad... (Score:4)
That's not how it works. The bees are fed pollen and nectar, and the chemical contents cause chemical castration and atrophy the ovaries. Royal jelly is more sterile.
You have to move bees into a separate, queenless colony and give them brood, and they'll raise a new queen. This colony is weak: it needs 21 days to raise a queen, then time for the queen to mate, then lay eggs and raise brood for 21 days to produce new workers. Mite and beetle infestations, robbers, and the like can attack the hive while its population is low.
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Speaking as somone who tries to keep bees, its not that simple.
A single queen is useless on her own, you still need a few thousand nurse bees and foragers bees (different stages of a worker bees life) to create what is called a viable colony. If the colony is too small, it will get picked off by wasps and won't be able to maintain the 30C internal temp needed for raising brood.
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There's also the other side of things that rarely gets talked about. Honey bees are an introduced species and actually harm native pollinators. There are definitely some species of plants that wouldn't do nearly as well without honey bees, but at least in North America, most plant species would do just fine without honey bees. The one thing that would happen if we lost honey bees in NA would be that the price of honey would increase, as none of the native bees produce nearly as much honey, and a lot of o
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In my area I see a wide variety of pollinators sharing the same plants, and honey bees only dominate near their hive. So in human backyards, full of introduced plants, they're the dominant pollinator, but even across the street in the park, the native plants have a wide variety of pollinators including bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, moths, etc.
Last year I got a cool picture of a miner bee and a miner wasp sharing a flower. I barely got the picture before a butterfly bullied in.
The big problem is that in m
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A German study in 2017 suggested that insect numbers have declined by 75% in the last 3 decades.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/19... [cnn.com]
I don't know about you, but I remember when you couldn't go out in summertime without encountering insects all the time, and you couldn't drive for an hour without getting your car splattered with bugs. It definitely seems to me like we have a lot fewer insects these days.
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Re: 40% isn't too bad... (Score:2)
Seriously? Anecdotal evidence as a substitute for science?
Re: 40% isn't too bad... (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously? Anecdotal evidence as a substitute for science?
Perhaps you should try clicking the link.
Here is the study he is referring to: https://journals.plos.org/plos... [plos.org]
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Yes 40% isn't that bad if a beekeeper's livelihood wasn't dependent on the number of bees they could rent out. I'm sure everyone in any other industry can deal with 40% less resources from the previous year. Farmers like it when they can only farm on 60% of their lands. Speaking of farmers (the beneficiaries of bees) like having 40% fewer bees to pollinate their crops.
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It is not obvious that it is necessary to have bee rentals other than specifically for the almond crop. Most farms around here keep bees and sell honey, if they're growing crops that are insect-pollinated.
The beekeeping industry I care about is the traditional honey industry, not the rentals.
40% loss of bee colonies does not imply 40% loss of pollinated land, or even in fact any loss of pollinated land. It does not imply there are fewer bees to pollinate the crops, either. It merely implies that the beekeep
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It is not obvious that it is necessary to have bee rentals other than specifically for the almond crop.
Bees disappearing as pollinators [abfnet.org] affects more than almonds. "Some crops, including blueberries and cherries, are 90-percent dependent on honey bee pollination. One crop, almonds, depends entirely on the honey bee for pollination at bloom time." A more comprehensive list [wikipedia.org]
Most farms around here keep bees and sell honey, if they're growing crops that are insect-pollinated.
Honey is a business for bee keepers; however, how do bees get honey without flowers. Crops are one way.
40% loss of bee colonies does not imply 40% loss of pollinated land,
What I said was: "I'm sure everyone in any other industry can deal with 40% less resources from the previous year. Farmers like it when
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I'm in a heavy blueberry production area, and they don't truck in bees for that.
There are naturally a lot of pollinators available at the right time. The farmers own year-round bees are completely sufficient. Same for cherries, which also grow around here.
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I'm in a heavy blueberry production area, and they don't truck in bees for that.
Your anecdotal sample size of 1 does not mean blueberry production does not depend on honey bees in other places or in general. "In addition, honey bees are used extensively by growers to augment populations of native pollinators". [ncsu.edu]
There are naturally a lot of pollinators available at the right time. The farmers own year-round bees are completely sufficient. Same for cherries, which also grow around here.
No one is saying that natural pollinators are not important in farming. What people are saying is that honey bees are very important in farming because natural pollination is not 100% within control of farmers or reliable. Crops need water and farmers need irrigation because rain
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My anecdotal sample size is much larger than one, you even quoted the part where I'm in a heavy blueberry production area.
It was unspecified, as it should be since it is anecdotal, but it isn't a size of one.
And you didn't comprehend my claim. If you disagree but get my claim wrong, you're wrong for sure! Even if I was wrong, you would also be wrong.
I didn't say that blueberry farms don't need bees. I said that the number of bees that they need is easily provided by year-round bees that live on the farm. It
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My anecdotal sample size is much larger than one, you even quoted the part where I'm in a heavy blueberry production area.
Again, in what world does your area represent all or the majority of blueberry production for the entire country? My sample size is from North Carolina. Here's another sample from Maine [youtube.com] if you want. And another example. [goodfruit.com] What part of the country do you represent?
And you didn't comprehend my claim. If you disagree but get my claim wrong, you're wrong for sure! Even if I was wrong, you would also be wrong.
This is your claim: "I'm in a heavy blueberry production area, and they don't truck in bees for that." Ok. Can you prove that the local blueberry area does not use trucked-in honey bees then? Do you spend all of your time in the field during bloom
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The billy the mountain reference has conceptual continuity with San Ber'dino. which means nothing yet.
Not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
The USAs crop fields are basically chemical poisoned deserts. The US uses dozens of pesticides and herbicides that have been banned in the EU and even china. And then there's the unnecessary feeding of antibiotics to livestock which then piss them out into the water courses causing even more problems. US agriculture is an enviromental disaster.
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Re: Not surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
FTFA? It's seasonal decline they are tracking. Idiots...
Over the past winter, 37% of honeybee colonies were lost to beekeepers, the worst winter decline recorded in the 13-year history of a nationwide survey aimed at charting beesâ(TM) fortunes. Overall, 40% of colonies died off over the entire year to April, which is above the 38% average since the survey began.
Re: Not surprised (Score:3)
Every single thing you've said is wrong.
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You only said one thing and you couldn't even get that right.
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AC claims antibiotics, which are used against bacteria, are useful for a disease caused by prions and another by viruses. Quick, call the Nobel Prize committee!
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Do you realise how stupid you come across with that utterly ignorant post? No, you probably don't.
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The USAs crop fields are basically chemical poisoned deserts. The US uses dozens of pesticides and herbicides that have been banned in the EU and even china. And then there's the unnecessary feeding of antibiotics to livestock which then piss them out into the water courses causing even more problems. US agriculture is an enviromental disaster.
And then you have the suburbanites who think they have to drench their homes and yards with all manner of pesticides and herbicides.
People need to understand that their yard is an ecosystem.
Re:Not surprised (Score:5, Informative)
Standard reminders re: "honeybee extinction" (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Honeybees are not even native to the US; their extinction in the US would be a reversion to how the environment was before their introduction. Yes, they are needed for the way mass agriculture is handled - monoculture where local insect populations are suppressed with pesticides, and everything blooms at once so there's little food for most of the year and then an overabundance for a brief period - but native pollinators, including native bees, would welcome the demise of the honeybee and agriculture being forced to design more to their needs via diversification and shelter strips.
But that's an entirely pointless theoretical, because...
2) A single queen and a handful of workers from an existing hive makes a new hive. Queens are bred en masse using techniques to encourage hives to make an abundance of queens. Any beekeeper can go online order new queens and workers from a breeder and start new hives at any point. 40% colony loss rates simply don't cut it; you need ~98% colony loss rates to prevent breeders from outbreeding the losses, and you also need for breeders to not go to any lengths at all (such as raising queen-breeding hives in sterile environments) to maintain their businesses in the face of it. Would a super-high loss rate drive most beekeepers out of business? Absolutely. But the species is not going extinct.
3) Winter colony losses are normal. 40% is high, certainly - 20% is more normal on average, although it varies greatly from location to location and year to year. But the key is, it's normal for some hives to die. Also, loss rates can differ from one location to the next. The US (or even just part of the US) may have a terrible winter with lots of loss, while another environment may have a great one with little loss.
Everyone has their pet theories as to why colony losses have been higher in recent years and wants to present them as "the" solution, and most of the theories have huge gaping holes (for example, France was largely blaming neonicotinoids, and banned them... and then the colony loss rate rose, so they largely switched to blaming asian hornets). The list of common diseases and pests of honeybees is massive [wikipedia.org]. A hive represents a wealth of honey, larvae, and adult bees in tight quarters, just ripe for attack. And unfortunately for honeybees, humans have moved bees to and from every corner of the world - picking up local pests and diseases that local bees had resistance to (but modern honeybee breeds to not), then transporting them around the world. Meanwhile, we put pesticide pressure on them (neonicotinoids being far from the only ones - organophosphates are particularly nasty), stress them by transporting them frequently to unfamiliar environments for pollination services (giving more opportunities for disease/pest transfer), etc, etc. It shouldn't be surprising that problems have arisen.
Honeybees aren't going extinct. But higher colony loss rates equates directly to higher expenses to beekeepers, which gets transferred directly to higher costs for bee products and services - and pollination service cost increases translate to higher prices for bee-pollinated crops. It's not the end of the world, but it is a bad thing, and hopefully it can be remedied.
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Only thing you missed is that there's a serious problem with honey bee monocultures as well. That's also why anyone can order new queens and workers online and have a functioning hive in 20 days.
Re:Standard reminders re: "honeybee extinction" (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. Where I am, for example, the ideal honeybee, genetically, would be the European Dark. They're far better suited to cold climates than the Italian bee (fuzzier, higher body volume to surface area ratio, flies in colder temperatures, maintains winter clusters at lower populations, etc). European Darks used to be dominant in much of Europe, particularly the north. But the Italian bee has been optimized more through breeding to more desirable characteristics for keepers, and now pure European Darks are comparatively rare (although the hybrid Buckfast bee, introduced in the early 20th century, is popular.. it's still mostly Italian, however).
Domestication has the annoying habit of tending to breed out diversity :P And a number of past attempts to increase diversity in bee strains have been disastrous, in that they unintentionally introduced pests and diseases in the process. Even the creation of the Buckfast bee (to rescue the British beekeeping industry from the sudden arrival of tracheal mites) is believed to have itself introduced one of the current pests/diseases (sorry, I forget which one off the top of my head).
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Re:Standard reminders re: "honeybee extinction" (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no such thing as a honeybee monoculture.
Honeybee C line contains Italians and Carniolans, among others. The queens in commercial lines are bred and farmed out, and those breeder queens are typically open-mated with wild bees in that area. The offspring get shipped around as queens from there.
The honeybee workers are queen plus drone DNA; while the queen's DNA is used for drones. That means the new queen, from the worker eggs raised as queens from the breeder queen, are breeder line crossed with whatever is local to the queen breeder.
The commercial queens are typically shipped mated, so they're mated from wherever the commercial queen breeding operation is set up. Now you have ((lineage x local) x local2) shipped to local3.
These bees then create drones, which mate with queens where they're used (local3). Many beekeepers raise their own queens after initial establishment, so you get more local crossing.
Here's the rub: the import genetics spread...if they're sufficiently-fit.
There are a great many wild honeybee colonies. These colonies, if given inappropriate genetics, tend to survive less. Those which survive but face disease produce fewer eggs and fewer drones. The strongest are able to best resist parasites and disease, keeping the hive healthy, drawing in more honey, and raising better brood.
These colonies split: the queen and half the bees leave, after the bees raise a new queen. The new queen is the queen's genetics crossed with drones, and mates with local drones. When a hive cannot grow sufficiently, it doesn't split much--assuming it doesn't just die.
All this means a number of complex things.
First, the introduction of commercial bees introduces genetics from those commercial bee lines crossed with regional genetics. This introduces genetic diversity into the local area.
Second, stronger feral hives will tend to pressure the genetics toward a more-fit, naturally-selected outcome. It would be best if beekeepers started receiving unmated queens to mate locally; nevertheless, the genetics are semi-feral, if for a different region.
Third, there is a sort of power struggle between local feral hives and local introduced hives in terms of genetics. A strong, well-adapted Carniolan will drift the feral population toward Carniolan genetics; a weak Carniolan will probably experience colony collapse. Many local beekeepers will split another hive, diluting the lineage with the local genetics; the local feral hives select for the strongest genetics, while re-introduction of F1 crosses essentially strengthens whichever traits are actually helpful to survival of local feral hives.
This means each region essentially produces a different honeybee genetic background, but is heavily-influenced by commercial and hobbyist beekeeping. Monoculture doesn't really exist because nobody is buying pure breeder queens to operate massive apiaries; instead, they're buying open-mated F1 hybrids.
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Which would all be well and good if queens were all purchased locally, and if the local wild bees weren't usually just the result of feral Italian / Carniolan lines.
Except they usually aren't, and they usually are.
Large parts of the world - including the US - has no native stock. Others used to have native stock, but it was displaced long ago by the abundance of nurtured domestic stock. There have even been efforts in the past to wipe out native bees due to various factors undesirable to beekeepers, such a
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Well yes, the US has no native stock; and the Italian bee spread because it was resistant to European Foulbrood, which was killing the European Black Bee.
My point is our feral bees overwhelmingly experience colony collapse among colonies which are wholly-inappropriate for the local climate and pest environment, or reduced propagation if they don't outright collapse; while strong traits persist in feral hives which carry a queen for a good 7 years. The feral hives, thus, tend to replace with regionally-a
Re:Standard reminders re: "honeybee extinction" (Score:5, Informative)
If I had to pick a single most likely "primary" driver, though, I'd go with Varroa and the viral diseases it spreads. Pesticide uses correlate poorly with colony collapse rates, but Varroa infestation rates correlate well. Varroa was isolated in native bees in east Asia until the 1960s. Colony collapse has tended to occur a few decades after Varroa was first detected in an area - for example, in the US it was first detected in 1987 - corresponding with time for the pest to spread. And its lifecycle makes it inherently prone to causing colony collapse. It prefers drone brood, but when there's a shortage of drone brood, it switches to workers - so when the queen reduces laying in the fall, there's suddenly a mass infestation of workers, and the population crashes. Infested bees also have the characteristic behavior associated with colony collapse - they're weaker, have poorer ability to navigate, and often simply never manage to return to the hive.
But again, I'll reiterate that everyone has their own theories, and I don't mean to talk down any of the competing ones. And certainly, even if one cause is "primary", everything else can be amplifying stressors.
Re:Standard reminders re: "honeybee extinction" (Score:5, Informative)
My cousin has been doing beekeeping for nearly 20 years now, and took over 400 odd hives from an old elderly guy who's kids weren't interested. She had serious collapses for years, while varroa is indeed a problem, the bigger problem is that all hives are heavily susceptible from it because all queens used in commercial beekeeping come from recessive breeding. We want the queens that lay the most eggs as quickly as possible, produces workers that gathers the most, don't use existing stored honey, but rather will go out and collect more nectar first. We want them docile and unlikely to attack when their hives are disturbed. Using queens that weren't geographically native, caused fewer deaths and faster hive recoveries. While it's just her case, and the studies are still not done? It does seem to work for some people.
Similar issues exist with ground crops like the current versions of wheat and rye China is using, it's a "dry" crop and uses less moisture when growing, in turn it's more susceptible to various fungi from Africa - which ironically enough is why they're having mass crop deaths in those same strains. Simply put, monocultures are bad in terms of survival of well anything.
Re:Standard reminders re: "honeybee extinction" (Score:5, Interesting)
Agree with every word of this. Across the board, monoculture is the "easy" solution, but it's a dangerous solution.
I'm still wondering when the market is going to get over its obsession of only ever selling one cultivar of bananas in stores. I mean, look at how many types of apples, citrus*, grapes, potatoes, brassicas**, onions, etc etc you can buy - but except in certain regions or in premium/specialty/ethnic food stores, generally you only find one banana cultivar (Cavendish). Not even that great of a cultivar, IMHO. I don't think most people have any clue how diverse bananas are. And it's not that cavendish is unusually easy to grow or ship - it's just that it's what people "expect" from a banana in terms of appearance, texture, and taste.
* It's hard to break most citrus down into "species" because they've been hybridized like crazy; it's a taxonomical mess. The scientific names of most are of the form "Citrus x (name)", to denote a hybrid with a common name.
** Two species of brassicas represent a wide variety of supermarket staples. Cultivars of B. oleracea make up broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, cabbage, brussels sprouts, etc, while B. rapa makes up turnips, bok choy, napa cabbage, and a number of others.
Re:Standard reminders re: "honeybee extinction" (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite true, though depending on where you live you can see more varieties. BC and in Southern Ontario there's around 4 that are common these days, lady fingers and blue java are the two I remember besides cavendish. Hybrids are a bit more interesting, and can be far more hardy on their own. Then you get into root grafting messes that create bastardized invasive species, something common with ornamental plants good example is the hybridized japanese lilac that was popular ~20 years ago, now they're destroying hardwood forests.
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Most stores in my area have two varieties of banana, Cavendish and a random finger banana. Asian markets usually have two or three varieties of finger banana, plus some big starchy ones.
It is not true that markets have an obsession with Cavendish, it is that the customers buy that one at a much higher rate. And if it isn't available, many customers just buy a different type of fruit instead of buying the other variety of banana, even when the store has it!
Also, the idea that you have a lot of varieties of a
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Blue Java is unlike anything if you've never had them before. And if they were available everywhere, cavendish would be already in the dustbin of history. They're sweet like ripe cavendish, and the texture and flavor is about on the level of vanilla ice cream without being starchy.
Also, the idea that you have a lot of varieties of apples is mostly a trick. The vast majority of apple varieties are just a traditional heirloom "Delicious" that had a different look and is propagated by cloning. It is just an individual plant with a different color, not an actual different variety. Plant the seeds, and you'll almost always get a Standard Delicious.
Give you a hint why, it's because delicious is one of the easiest to prepare for canning and use in other foods. You don't need to add sugar to it to sweeten it up. The seeds are small, they're also resistant to worms which wi
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Blue Java is great. Mysore bananas are awesome too. :)
Unlike what was written above (although not from the GP), there's nothing special about Cavendish ripening or transport abilities. Many other bananas have slower ripening times and thicker, more resilient rinds. Cavendish are just raised and sold en masse because that's what people expect a banana to look and taste like.
Also, nobody is talking about seeded bananas as a mass-market alternative. Seedless banana lines are surprisingly easy
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Much of that is true, but mangoes are often grown from seeds.
My wife is from Thailand, where every house has multiple mango varieties in the yard. Thai people know the varieties well, and typically do grow them from seed, and the traditional types are true.
Commercial farms typically use grafted nursery stock because the trees grow smaller and are easier to manage. But along the roadsides all over Thailand are giant mango trees, and everybody eats them.
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Note my caveat: "At least from a monoembryonic seed". Thai mangoes are polyembryonic. :) They generally contain three clones and one crossbreed. Monos are only crossbreeds. And crossbreed mangoes overwhelmingly come out fibrous and turpentine-tasting.
Re:Standard reminders re: "honeybee extinction" (Score:4, Informative)
Looks like new techniques on varroa eradication are on the rise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And here's new insight into varroa biology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Whether honeybees are native is irrelevant because if that were the only criteria for where things ought to be, we'd all fuck off back to Africa.
A literal handful of workers might or might not be able to protect a queen and find enough resources to start a new hive. When hives swarm naturally, more than a handful of other bees go with the new queen.
The single most damaging thing we do to bees is probably just to move them around. We do it for the convenience of farmers, so the bees can be gone when they spr
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The single most damaging thing we do to bees is probably just to move them around. We do it for the convenience of farmers, so the bees can be gone when they spray toxics on our food, and so that they don't have to plant anything for the bees to eat during the rest of the year.
I don't know anything about bees except what I've been reading in Slashdot threads every time the subject comes up and I come to the same conclusion. Dragging hives around on trucks causes a whole lot of problems.
It's both emblematic and symptomatic of factory farming.
It seems like a problem of overspecialization to me. Fruit farmers who need bees should be beekeepers. They should have permanent hives of their own, and dedicate land to providing them food throughout the year. For tree crops they don't even necessarily need any more land. They can plant the
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Any beekeeper can go online order new queens and workers from a breeder and start new hives at any point.
That's completely missing the point. That's like saying a farmer can go online anytime after they've lost all their crops and get new seed. Never mind they get no revenue this year from a crop failure.
40% colony loss rates simply don't cut it; you need ~98% colony loss rates to prevent breeders from outbreeding the losses, and you also need for breeders to not go to any lengths at all (such as raising queen-breeding hives in sterile environments) to maintain their businesses in the face of it.
40% is overall average. That doesn't mean that some beekeepers didn't lose all of their bees. Some beekeepers didn't lose any; some may have lost all.
Would a super-high loss rate drive most beekeepers out of business? Absolutely. But the species is not going extinct.
Even if it wasn't an average overall, if you were a beekeeper, how would you like to lose 40% of your resources? That won't hurt your business? It doesn't take s
Managed bee colony numbers declining, 1/3 of 2013 (Score:2)
Hello,
I have a problem with your claim "beekeepers just get more bees to compensate for the loss of colonies". See the link below. It shows the number of managed bee colonies having declined by 2/3 since 2018. A weakness of this is apparently that it relied on self-reporting, but it's still a terrifying trend.
At what point will there be insufficient bees for agricultural needs?
https://qz.com/1649291/what-is... [qz.com]
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It is more insightful and informative that what you have to share, apparently. If you think the poster is incorrect then tell us why.
Re:Standard reminders re: "honeybee extinction" (Score:4, Interesting)
CRISPR to the rescue! (Score:2)
No animal will ever go extinct again;
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
Many aspects to the story - all bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are various aspects to the tale of the honeybee, essentially all of them bad...
First, the way honeybees are used in US agriculture: trucking dozens of colonies from one crop to the next, all over the country, and then taking most of their honey and feeding them sugar water. Surprise - this is not good for the colony.
Second, the mass usage of insecticides on the above-mentioned crops. They aren't sprayed when problems arise - they are always sprayed. Bees go feed on the flowers of plants soaked in insecticides. Surprise - this is not good for the colony.
Industrial agriculture needs to get a clue. This is not going to happen voluntarily. Ultimately, one is going to have to legislate: break up huge monoculture plantations, prohibit the mass "preventative" usage of pesticides, etc..
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The native bees don't produce as much honey, which is why we don't use them.
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I'm embarrassed that you go abroad, too.
Native bees only make honey for their own consumption, and are more selective about which plants they visit.
The vast majority of native insect pollination is done by flies, wasps, butterflies, and moths, with native bees taking up an important position on certain plants.
You can stand next to a bunch of thimbleberry and notice the prominent bumble bees. Most people only see that much. But slow down, look closer; there are a much larger number of flies and moths visitin
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all over the country
Pinocchio Alert!
This varies heavily by region.
Fake news (Score:5, Interesting)
Bees or refugees? (Score:2)
time to move on (Score:3)
I guess that they, like coal miners and buggy whip manufacturers will just have to retrain for some other occupation
The Bees Went to Last Roundup (Score:3)
40% of hives DIED! (Score:1)
Oh, by the way, it's usually 38%, but that bit won't get in the headline.