4 ms·

I believe the assertion is that in order to maintain the bee population at the level necessary to meet demands on agriculture given the extraordinary rise in th

by levbrie 10y ago

I believe the assertion is that in order to maintain the bee population at the level necessary to meet demands on agriculture given the extraordinary rise in the death rate of both individual bees and entire colonies, the beekeeping industry has had to import far more colonies per year.

tptacek 10y ago
That doesn't make sense. Again: active colonies, not the number imported. Literally: there are more live bees in the US post-neonicotinoid.
- cmrdporcupine 10y ago
  Active colonies != total bee population. If the mortality rate is high, then you need more colonies with reproducing bees in them to maintain the population at a certain level.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Can you please cite the source that shows total bee population declining as number of active colonies increases?
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43191.pdf https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43191.pdf Page 10 “Long-term population trends for the honey bee, the most important managed pollinator, are demonstrably downward.”
      - tptacek 10y ago
        Cite the whole context of that quote! They're referring to trends since the 1940s. The varroa mite literally wiped out the feral honeybee population in the US. There are no more North American feral honeybees! Of course the long-term population trend is downward!
        smallnamespace 10y ago
        I'm not an academic researcher so I don't have the raw data that you want, but I think it's worth not missing the forest for the trees. Bee populations have been demonstrably stressed for a very long time, and CCD and other more recent developments are yet another sign. The need for beekeepers to aggressively split hives is a sign that things are going very badly for them, even if we manage to raise the number of colonies in the short term. Note that there are plenty of other parts of our ecosystem that show signs of severe stress as well (e.g. amphibians, coral reefs, etc.); we may very well reach a tipping point where large swaths of various food chains catastrophically collapse.
        tptacek 10y ago
        I'm sorry, but respectfully, you've provided neither forest nor trees. I'm not an academic researcher either, but I feel as if I'm one of the few people on this thread that has heard of a varroa mite, or knows apis mellifera's actual role in the North American ecosystem. All I did was look stuff up. Can't everyone else do the same thing? The 2006 date cited for CCD isn't the government acknowledging CCD. It's the first published reports of CCD in commercial colonies. It's not a giant conspiracy. It's also worth knowing that overwintering losses stabilized after 2006, and commercial populations hit record numbers afterwards. Clearly, there are bee stressors other than "colony collapse disorder". But beepocolypse advocates use the term "CCD" as a cudgel in any discussion about stressors or population losses. No, can't do that. I don't need perfect data. Any data will do.
        smallnamespace 10y ago
        I'm not sure who your complaint is addressed to, honestly, and I don't see what you would prefer people be doing differently. It seems like data collection in the US has always been at the colony count + mortality level, which has obvious limitations, such as not looking at the colony health. I'd presume that people are looking at getting better information, but rolling that out will take a lot of time. OTOH, there are lots of other signs that bees, other pollinators, and many other parts of our ecosystem are under enormous stress. I think we should rightfully be alarmed, not because of the bee's direct effect on us, but because it is also a relatively well-measured bellwether for the status of other natural services that other species provide. Are you saying we don't have enough data to warrant taking any action, or are you just unhappy at how this is being presented in the media? Note that action also includes finding more data.
- hristov 10y ago
  If you have signed a pollination contract to provide 100 beehives for a commercial orchard and your colonies keep dying then in order to be sure you can perform your contract and not incur damages, you will make sure you have more than 100 beehives in order to allow for colony collapse. Similarly if you are making honey. If you have the right to make honey over an area that will support 100 beehives but you know that 20 of them are going to die, ten you will put in 120 beehives. Commercial beekeepers know how to create new colonies by artificially triggering the split/swarming process. Thus, the logical response of commercial beekeepers to the colony collapse disorder is to keep extra colonies around. It makes complete sense. Unfortunately, I doubt a similar adaptation is happening in the wild. We are losing wild pollinators and that may have all kinds of negative effects on the ecosystem.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Which wild pollinators are we losing?
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      Wild bees, for one.
    - jly 10y ago
      I don't think you read the linked article. It deals with only wild bee species and their decline.

by levbrie 10y ago

tptacek 10y ago

That doesn't make sense. Again: active colonies, not the number imported. Literally: there are more live bees in the US post-neonicotinoid.

cmrdporcupine 10y ago
Active colonies != total bee population. If the mortality rate is high, then you need more colonies with reproducing bees in them to maintain the population at a certain level.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Can you please cite the source that shows total bee population declining as number of active colonies increases?
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43191.pdf https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43191.pdf Page 10 “Long-term population trends for the honey bee, the most important managed pollinator, are demonstrably downward.”
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Cite the whole context of that quote! They're referring to trends since the 1940s. The varroa mite literally wiped out the feral honeybee population in the US. There are no more North American feral honeybees! Of course the long-term population trend is downward!
      - smallnamespace 10y ago
        I'm not an academic researcher so I don't have the raw data that you want, but I think it's worth not missing the forest for the trees. Bee populations have been demonstrably stressed for a very long time, and CCD and other more recent developments are yet another sign. The need for beekeepers to aggressively split hives is a sign that things are going very badly for them, even if we manage to raise the number of colonies in the short term. Note that there are plenty of other parts of our ecosystem that show signs of severe stress as well (e.g. amphibians, coral reefs, etc.); we may very well reach a tipping point where large swaths of various food chains catastrophically collapse.
        tptacek 10y ago
        I'm sorry, but respectfully, you've provided neither forest nor trees. I'm not an academic researcher either, but I feel as if I'm one of the few people on this thread that has heard of a varroa mite, or knows apis mellifera's actual role in the North American ecosystem. All I did was look stuff up. Can't everyone else do the same thing? The 2006 date cited for CCD isn't the government acknowledging CCD. It's the first published reports of CCD in commercial colonies. It's not a giant conspiracy. It's also worth knowing that overwintering losses stabilized after 2006, and commercial populations hit record numbers afterwards. Clearly, there are bee stressors other than "colony collapse disorder". But beepocolypse advocates use the term "CCD" as a cudgel in any discussion about stressors or population losses. No, can't do that. I don't need perfect data. Any data will do.
        smallnamespace 10y ago
        I'm not sure who your complaint is addressed to, honestly, and I don't see what you would prefer people be doing differently. It seems like data collection in the US has always been at the colony count + mortality level, which has obvious limitations, such as not looking at the colony health. I'd presume that people are looking at getting better information, but rolling that out will take a lot of time. OTOH, there are lots of other signs that bees, other pollinators, and many other parts of our ecosystem are under enormous stress. I think we should rightfully be alarmed, not because of the bee's direct effect on us, but because it is also a relatively well-measured bellwether for the status of other natural services that other species provide. Are you saying we don't have enough data to warrant taking any action, or are you just unhappy at how this is being presented in the media? Note that action also includes finding more data.
hristov 10y ago
If you have signed a pollination contract to provide 100 beehives for a commercial orchard and your colonies keep dying then in order to be sure you can perform your contract and not incur damages, you will make sure you have more than 100 beehives in order to allow for colony collapse. Similarly if you are making honey. If you have the right to make honey over an area that will support 100 beehives but you know that 20 of them are going to die, ten you will put in 120 beehives. Commercial beekeepers know how to create new colonies by artificially triggering the split/swarming process. Thus, the logical response of commercial beekeepers to the colony collapse disorder is to keep extra colonies around. It makes complete sense. Unfortunately, I doubt a similar adaptation is happening in the wild. We are losing wild pollinators and that may have all kinds of negative effects on the ecosystem.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Which wild pollinators are we losing?
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    Wild bees, for one.
  - jly 10y ago
    I don't think you read the linked article. It deals with only wild bee species and their decline.