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Are there any negative effects to harvesting this bee bread? > But the bees do not consume their pollen fresh. Instead, they take it into the hive and pack the

Are there any negative effects to harvesting this bee bread? > But the bees do not consume their pollen fresh. Instead, they take it into the hive and pack the granules into empty comb cells, mixing them with nectar and digestive fluids and sealing the cell with a drop of honey. Once processed in this way, the pollen remains stable indefinitely. Beekeepers call this form of pollen ‘perga’ or ‘bee bread’. This implies it's their food. Given the recent concerns with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder, is this unusual delicacy worth the potential environmental damages? (I don't mean that rhetorically; It's an actual question.)

0xffff2 10y ago
What does this have to do with colony collapse disorder? AFAIK, we don't really understand colony collapse disorder, but I think it's safe to say it doesn't have anything to do with humans taking the bees' food. In fact, the very first sentence of the Wikipedia articles says "Colony collapse disorder is the phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind ... plenty of food..."
- bpchaps 10y ago
  > I think it's safe to say it doesn't have anything to do with humans taking the bees' food. > we don't really understand colony collapse disorder Look at the bee expert here. ;) But really, the parent post didn't make a direct connection to the two. More of an implication of a combination of the two being pretty disastrous.
  - 0xffff2 10y ago
    I mean, humans have been harvesting bee products for at least a few thousand years...
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      The title of "Sealer of the Honey" was given in the First Dynasty, Egypt! So yes quite a long time.
    - bpchaps 10y ago
      And bees have been around a lot, lot longer than that. Also, thousands of years ago, there wasn't the capability of mass production like we have today.
    - yawz 10y ago
      Actually, up until very recently (relatively speaking), it was not really "harvesting", but it was "destroying the hive while getting the honey". Modern hive design (there are a few popular ones) allows us, beekeepers, to harvest the honey without harming the bees. It also allows us to manage the hive and the colony much more productively.
      - kawsper 10y ago
        Could you link to the modern hive designs, and maybe tell a bit about them?
        yawz 10y ago
        Certainly. Langstroth Hive (that I use): https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Langstroth_hive https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Langstroth_hive Top-bar Hive: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Horizontal_top-bar_hive https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Horizontal_top-bar_hive There are also less popular choices: - Warré - WBC - Long box hive Here's a list by Wikipedia: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Beehive https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Beehive
        pvaldes 10y ago
        In a few words: In the old middle age hives didn't have methods to keep the queen putting eggs anywhere she wanted. Thus all the larvae where distroyed when collecting the honey. Currently we know that there is a measure that permit all bees enter except the queen. You can put a metallic mesh splitting the hive in two areas that the queen can not cross. In the upper area only workers (smaller) can enter and they store honey and other products as usual, but there aren't eggs, so there is not any dead larvae in your honey. It was a big revolution.
saalweachter 10y ago
All harvesting from bees is essentially stealing their food. Modern hive designs allow a beekeeper to take excess honey or pollen from a hive non-destructively. The trick is to only take it from strong hives, while leaving the bees a sufficient quantity to overwinter. Honey is the overwinter food; beekeepers typically try to leave the bees about 80 lbs, depending on the climate. Pollen is much more important for raising new bees -- removing it will limit the growth of the hive, which in some species is actually desirable. A hive which grows too much is prone to swarming, which beekeepers typically avoid. They will instead save the pollen for the spring -- if you feed the bees pollen after it has begun to warm but before there are flowers in bloom, it will help them build their population back up earlier and they will be at full strength for the early nectar flows.
- jcoffland 10y ago
  > All harvesting from bees is essentially stealing their food. Calling this stealing speaks more about humans than it does of bees. Why do we view bees as selfish? Another, more charitable view, is that the bees willingly share with humans. But they sting, you say. Bees only sting if you move rapidly, destroy their home or you catch them on a bad day, like right before a storm. On sunny days I have successfully harvested honey from hives, in normal street clothes, with zero stings simply by moving carefully and staying calm. So why do we view bees as selfish creatures? Because we are selfish.
  - mathrawka 10y ago
    Stealing does not mean we view bees as selfish. Stealing means we know it is not ours, yet we take it without consent.
    - justinpombrio 10y ago
      > we know it is not ours Ownership is not a physical property of the world, it exists in the minds of people. The bees almost certainly have no notion of ownership, so saying that "we know it is not ours" speaks more about humans than it does of bees.
adrusi 10y ago
You aren't going to go to a wild hive and collect their food. Apiarists make their own hives, and maintain them. An increased demand for bee bread would probably work to counteract declining honeybee populations, by spawning more human-managed hives.
- aetherson 10y ago
  Human-managed honeybee populations are not in decline.
  - dugword 10y ago
    Yes they are. That is exactly what the Colony Collapse Disorder crisis is all about. The hives managed by beekeepers for the purpose of pollenating crops are mysteriously dying off, and they are having a hard time finding replacement swarms to manage.
    - beala 10y ago
      I'm hardly a beekeeping expert, but I've read that human managed colonies are actually not in decline. "The 2014 numbers, which came out earlier this year, show that the number of managed colonies -- that is, commercial honey-producing bee colonies managed by human beekeepers -- is now the highest it's been in 20 years." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/23/call-off-the-bee-pocalypse-u-s-honeybee-colonies-hit-a-20-year-high/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/23/call-... The article argues that CCD has made beekeeping more expensive, which is a cost passed onto consumers in the form of more expensive honey, but beekeepers have found ways to keep their colonies from disappearing.
      - saalweachter 10y ago
        The way an old-timer described it to me was that CCD amounts to an increase in overwintering failures from around 10% for well-managed hives to around 25-50%. This in turn means that you've got to do a lot more splits (where you create a new hive by splitting an old hive into two, and either inducing them to produce a queen or adding a carefully-bred queen yourself) or buying new packages of bees from someone who has already done this for you. A new hive usually needs a year to get up to full strength -- you can occasionally take a little bit off a new hive, but not much, and most beekeepers don't even risk it. As you say, 25-50% failure rates are expensive but currently within the range of what can be replaced; new packages of bees currently cost around $100-150 on the east coast, but aren't really hard to find. I'm somewhat curious how high of a failure rate can be sustained. It pretty much depends on how many splits you can generate a year starting from a single hive, which isn't a number I'm familiar with.
SixSigma 10y ago
Milk is food for baby cows.
- jdswain 10y ago
  If there were still baby cow's. The baby cows are taken away from their mothers and slaughtered.
  - cgh 10y ago
    If that were true, all cows would be extinct within one generation. As someone who just visited a farm and bought a quarter of a cow for the freezer, I can say I saw various calves wandering around.
    - jdswain 10y ago
      Not all calves, but most. They need to keep the cows lactating, so they need to keep having calves. There is some work on selectively breeding to produce females, but even then there are more females born than are useable for milk production. They are separated from their mothers as early as 1 day after birth and are normally sold at 2 weeks of age. Veal is meat from calves that are only weeks old, anywhere from a few weeks to about 8 months old. There's varied opinions on if this is acceptable animal welfare. But basically, calves are a byproduct of milk production.

0xffff2 10y ago

What does this have to do with colony collapse disorder? AFAIK, we don't really understand colony collapse disorder, but I think it's safe to say it doesn't have anything to do with humans taking the bees' food. In fact, the very first sentence of the Wikipedia articles says "Colony collapse disorder is the phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind ... plenty of food..."

bpchaps 10y ago
> I think it's safe to say it doesn't have anything to do with humans taking the bees' food. > we don't really understand colony collapse disorder Look at the bee expert here. ;) But really, the parent post didn't make a direct connection to the two. More of an implication of a combination of the two being pretty disastrous.
- 0xffff2 10y ago
  I mean, humans have been harvesting bee products for at least a few thousand years...
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    The title of "Sealer of the Honey" was given in the First Dynasty, Egypt! So yes quite a long time.
  - bpchaps 10y ago
    And bees have been around a lot, lot longer than that. Also, thousands of years ago, there wasn't the capability of mass production like we have today.
  - yawz 10y ago
    Actually, up until very recently (relatively speaking), it was not really "harvesting", but it was "destroying the hive while getting the honey". Modern hive design (there are a few popular ones) allows us, beekeepers, to harvest the honey without harming the bees. It also allows us to manage the hive and the colony much more productively.
    - kawsper 10y ago
      Could you link to the modern hive designs, and maybe tell a bit about them?
      - yawz 10y ago
        Certainly. Langstroth Hive (that I use): https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Langstroth_hive https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Langstroth_hive Top-bar Hive: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Horizontal_top-bar_hive https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Horizontal_top-bar_hive There are also less popular choices: - Warré - WBC - Long box hive Here's a list by Wikipedia: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Beehive https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Beehive
      - pvaldes 10y ago
        In a few words: In the old middle age hives didn't have methods to keep the queen putting eggs anywhere she wanted. Thus all the larvae where distroyed when collecting the honey. Currently we know that there is a measure that permit all bees enter except the queen. You can put a metallic mesh splitting the hive in two areas that the queen can not cross. In the upper area only workers (smaller) can enter and they store honey and other products as usual, but there aren't eggs, so there is not any dead larvae in your honey. It was a big revolution.

saalweachter 10y ago

All harvesting from bees is essentially stealing their food. Modern hive designs allow a beekeeper to take excess honey or pollen from a hive non-destructively. The trick is to only take it from strong hives, while leaving the bees a sufficient quantity to overwinter. Honey is the overwinter food; beekeepers typically try to leave the bees about 80 lbs, depending on the climate. Pollen is much more important for raising new bees -- removing it will limit the growth of the hive, which in some species is actually desirable. A hive which grows too much is prone to swarming, which beekeepers typically avoid. They will instead save the pollen for the spring -- if you feed the bees pollen after it has begun to warm but before there are flowers in bloom, it will help them build their population back up earlier and they will be at full strength for the early nectar flows.

jcoffland 10y ago
> All harvesting from bees is essentially stealing their food. Calling this stealing speaks more about humans than it does of bees. Why do we view bees as selfish? Another, more charitable view, is that the bees willingly share with humans. But they sting, you say. Bees only sting if you move rapidly, destroy their home or you catch them on a bad day, like right before a storm. On sunny days I have successfully harvested honey from hives, in normal street clothes, with zero stings simply by moving carefully and staying calm. So why do we view bees as selfish creatures? Because we are selfish.
- mathrawka 10y ago
  Stealing does not mean we view bees as selfish. Stealing means we know it is not ours, yet we take it without consent.
  - justinpombrio 10y ago
    > we know it is not ours Ownership is not a physical property of the world, it exists in the minds of people. The bees almost certainly have no notion of ownership, so saying that "we know it is not ours" speaks more about humans than it does of bees.

adrusi 10y ago

You aren't going to go to a wild hive and collect their food. Apiarists make their own hives, and maintain them. An increased demand for bee bread would probably work to counteract declining honeybee populations, by spawning more human-managed hives.

aetherson 10y ago
Human-managed honeybee populations are not in decline.
- dugword 10y ago
  Yes they are. That is exactly what the Colony Collapse Disorder crisis is all about. The hives managed by beekeepers for the purpose of pollenating crops are mysteriously dying off, and they are having a hard time finding replacement swarms to manage.
  - beala 10y ago
    I'm hardly a beekeeping expert, but I've read that human managed colonies are actually not in decline. "The 2014 numbers, which came out earlier this year, show that the number of managed colonies -- that is, commercial honey-producing bee colonies managed by human beekeepers -- is now the highest it's been in 20 years." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/23/call-off-the-bee-pocalypse-u-s-honeybee-colonies-hit-a-20-year-high/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/23/call-... The article argues that CCD has made beekeeping more expensive, which is a cost passed onto consumers in the form of more expensive honey, but beekeepers have found ways to keep their colonies from disappearing.
    - saalweachter 10y ago
      The way an old-timer described it to me was that CCD amounts to an increase in overwintering failures from around 10% for well-managed hives to around 25-50%. This in turn means that you've got to do a lot more splits (where you create a new hive by splitting an old hive into two, and either inducing them to produce a queen or adding a carefully-bred queen yourself) or buying new packages of bees from someone who has already done this for you. A new hive usually needs a year to get up to full strength -- you can occasionally take a little bit off a new hive, but not much, and most beekeepers don't even risk it. As you say, 25-50% failure rates are expensive but currently within the range of what can be replaced; new packages of bees currently cost around $100-150 on the east coast, but aren't really hard to find. I'm somewhat curious how high of a failure rate can be sustained. It pretty much depends on how many splits you can generate a year starting from a single hive, which isn't a number I'm familiar with.

SixSigma 10y ago

Milk is food for baby cows.

jdswain 10y ago
If there were still baby cow's. The baby cows are taken away from their mothers and slaughtered.
- cgh 10y ago
  If that were true, all cows would be extinct within one generation. As someone who just visited a farm and bought a quarter of a cow for the freezer, I can say I saw various calves wandering around.
  - jdswain 10y ago
    Not all calves, but most. They need to keep the cows lactating, so they need to keep having calves. There is some work on selectively breeding to produce females, but even then there are more females born than are useable for milk production. They are separated from their mothers as early as 1 day after birth and are normally sold at 2 weeks of age. Veal is meat from calves that are only weeks old, anywhere from a few weeks to about 8 months old. There's varied opinions on if this is acceptable animal welfare. But basically, calves are a byproduct of milk production.