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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

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.
    - mchaver 10y ago
      I don't see why the concept of ownership could not exist in non-human beings. Animal concepts of territory seem like a form of ownership. This discusses some species of bees defending mating territories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory_(animal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory_(animal)
  - ACow_Adonis 10y ago
    I hope I'm not the only hacker news reader who views the discussion/association of human social constructs and anthropomorphism such as property and consent to a colony of insects as hilariously comical... /and my mother was an entomologist, so I'm perfectly happy with allusions between humans/insects even if most polite/modern society find such offensive...
- dpratt71 10y ago
  Why would bees willingly share with humans?
  - PavlovsCat 10y ago
    Why do some humans help a wounded or hungry/thirsty animal they come across, even when there are no other humans around to signal virtue to? Why wouldn't a bee (colony) be nice just because it can and likes to? I'm not saying that is the reason, but why can't that be the reason, or part of it?
    - dpratt71 10y ago
      I think it could be argued that the behavior you ascribe to humans exists for the same reason that some dogs chase after cars. That is, it is an ingrained behavior that tends to enhance our survival and is sometimes expressed or triggered in contexts where it doesn't really make sense. In truth, I believe that life has a spiritual dimension, that my life has purpose, blah blah blah, but I find it useful on occasion to temporarily 'forget' that I believe such things.
      - PavlovsCat 10y ago
        Okay, but bees are arguable even more social than we are, so the same might apply to them. I'm not saying that's the cause, that they recognize a person they like and let them have some honey, I guess they simply don't have a good enough reason to attack (which is not "free" for bees, either), and in the long run, it turned out to be useful to play nice with humans. But I don't know.. and I also wouldn't be surprised if bees are good judges of character and/or are generous, or have pity on us confused humans and wish they could do more to help than just giving us honey. In a general sense, liking life forms that don't actively threaten us, just enjoying there being other life, should be useful for all life, since all life kind of depends on the "tapestry of life" which sustains it as well. Doesn't mean it is so, but it wouldn't surprise me. I say this a lot but that's kind of my point, "why should this be ruled out, why would that be surprising", not so much making a positive claim as debating an implied negative one. In this [1] thread, someone linked the concept of biophilia, and I had to think of this discussion as well: if we allow for humans liking life "just because" or "for some reason", we should allow for that in animals, too. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12053272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12053272
- Retra 10y ago
  It's a man-eat-bee-food world, and the bees aren't morally or physically empowered enough to defer this behavior.
byron_fast 10y ago
In my experience most commercial beekeepers use cyanide gas to kill their bees after harvesting the honey; they start fresh with new queens in spring. The rare few who overwinter their bees use sugar syrup and store the bees in a cool warehouse designed to keep them dormant during winter. From a commercial beekeeping perspective "colony collapse disorder" is nothing but a recent news fad. There are cycles of different problems for decades, but I doubt there is something extraordinary about the current state of beekeeping. Killing the makers of your livelihood and dealing with catastrophic problems is usually known as "farming".
- beardicus 10y ago
  Where is this common practice? I've heard of warehousing bees, but not gassing them to death.
  - byron_fast 10y ago
    This was common in central Canada in the 90s, where I worked for a beekeeper. I don't know if cyanide use is still common, but the majority of the dozen or so beekeepers I knew back then all did this and I understood it was common practice in our region. If you don't winter your bees, you have to kill them somehow. And most beekeepers with any kind of scale do not have a way to overwinter. Overwintering has since become more popular because of diseases and queen availability, but judging by the existence of the queen industry I'd guess many are still killing their bees.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  Where do they get new queens in spring? And where do the new queens get workers?
  - byron_fast 10y ago
    From places that sell queens, usually by mail these days. The last I heard they were only buying queens from New Zealand because American bees were getting too aggressive; not sure if that's still true.

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.
  - mchaver 10y ago
    I don't see why the concept of ownership could not exist in non-human beings. Animal concepts of territory seem like a form of ownership. This discusses some species of bees defending mating territories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory_(animal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory_(animal)
- ACow_Adonis 10y ago
  I hope I'm not the only hacker news reader who views the discussion/association of human social constructs and anthropomorphism such as property and consent to a colony of insects as hilariously comical... /and my mother was an entomologist, so I'm perfectly happy with allusions between humans/insects even if most polite/modern society find such offensive...
dpratt71 10y ago
Why would bees willingly share with humans?
- PavlovsCat 10y ago
  Why do some humans help a wounded or hungry/thirsty animal they come across, even when there are no other humans around to signal virtue to? Why wouldn't a bee (colony) be nice just because it can and likes to? I'm not saying that is the reason, but why can't that be the reason, or part of it?
  - dpratt71 10y ago
    I think it could be argued that the behavior you ascribe to humans exists for the same reason that some dogs chase after cars. That is, it is an ingrained behavior that tends to enhance our survival and is sometimes expressed or triggered in contexts where it doesn't really make sense. In truth, I believe that life has a spiritual dimension, that my life has purpose, blah blah blah, but I find it useful on occasion to temporarily 'forget' that I believe such things.
    - PavlovsCat 10y ago
      Okay, but bees are arguable even more social than we are, so the same might apply to them. I'm not saying that's the cause, that they recognize a person they like and let them have some honey, I guess they simply don't have a good enough reason to attack (which is not "free" for bees, either), and in the long run, it turned out to be useful to play nice with humans. But I don't know.. and I also wouldn't be surprised if bees are good judges of character and/or are generous, or have pity on us confused humans and wish they could do more to help than just giving us honey. In a general sense, liking life forms that don't actively threaten us, just enjoying there being other life, should be useful for all life, since all life kind of depends on the "tapestry of life" which sustains it as well. Doesn't mean it is so, but it wouldn't surprise me. I say this a lot but that's kind of my point, "why should this be ruled out, why would that be surprising", not so much making a positive claim as debating an implied negative one. In this [1] thread, someone linked the concept of biophilia, and I had to think of this discussion as well: if we allow for humans liking life "just because" or "for some reason", we should allow for that in animals, too. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12053272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12053272
Retra 10y ago
It's a man-eat-bee-food world, and the bees aren't morally or physically empowered enough to defer this behavior.

byron_fast 10y ago

In my experience most commercial beekeepers use cyanide gas to kill their bees after harvesting the honey; they start fresh with new queens in spring. The rare few who overwinter their bees use sugar syrup and store the bees in a cool warehouse designed to keep them dormant during winter. From a commercial beekeeping perspective "colony collapse disorder" is nothing but a recent news fad. There are cycles of different problems for decades, but I doubt there is something extraordinary about the current state of beekeeping. Killing the makers of your livelihood and dealing with catastrophic problems is usually known as "farming".

beardicus 10y ago
Where is this common practice? I've heard of warehousing bees, but not gassing them to death.
- byron_fast 10y ago
  This was common in central Canada in the 90s, where I worked for a beekeeper. I don't know if cyanide use is still common, but the majority of the dozen or so beekeepers I knew back then all did this and I understood it was common practice in our region. If you don't winter your bees, you have to kill them somehow. And most beekeepers with any kind of scale do not have a way to overwinter. Overwintering has since become more popular because of diseases and queen availability, but judging by the existence of the queen industry I'd guess many are still killing their bees.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
Where do they get new queens in spring? And where do the new queens get workers?
- byron_fast 10y ago
  From places that sell queens, usually by mail these days. The last I heard they were only buying queens from New Zealand because American bees were getting too aggressive; not sure if that's still true.