5 ms·

Believe it or not, the bees are doing just fine

36 points by em3rgent0rdr 10y ago

Retric 10y ago
Bee colonies is a somewhat optimistic number. US honey production is a more dramatic drop from 2000. http://www.capitalpress.com/Nation_World/Nation/20150325/us-honey-production-up-in-2014-but-colony-losses-continue http://www.capitalpress.com/Nation_World/Nation/20150325/us-... even though that chart looks almost flat from 2000 - 2016 Also of note, this is not in a vacuum the EPA has been active over the last few years. https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/epa-actions-protect-pollinators https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/epa-actions-protec...
JauntyHatAngle 10y ago
Uh, I thought it was the wild bees that we were concerned about. And from the article about wild bees: "Of course, the discussion above concerns only commercial bees that are managed by humans and businesses. Wild bees — whether they're honeybees or one of our 4,000 other native bee species — face different difficulties. If those species suffer die-offs, there's nobody around to breed new queens and help them recover. Wild bees are on their own. Recent research has shown that the use of certain insecticides called neonicotinoids has been linked to declines in wild bee populations. But assessing the true magnitude of the effect is difficult, because it's a lot harder to survey wild bee populations than domesticated ones." So basically, move along, bit of a nothing article.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Wild honeybees have been extinct in the US for decades, owing to the Varroa mite.
  - tupshin 10y ago
    Citation would be nice. This article talks about them having rebounded after near extinction: http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/08/some-honeybee-colonies-adapt-wake-deadly-mites http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/08/some-honeybee-coloni...
lucideer 10y ago
I don't understand the purpose of this article. The headline seems to be pushing the message "relax, forget about it, everything's fine". The content of the article is much more ambiguous. It starts by saying a Hawaiian bee has been added to the endangered list, follows by explaining the effects of colony collapse disorder: little change in commercial bee numbers, harsh economic times for beekeepers, unmeasured and likely dire change for wild bees. There is no conclusion to the article, but the bees do not appear to be "doing just fine"...
- onewaystreet 10y ago
  Authors for major news sites don't write their own headlines which is why there is often a disconnect with the actual content of the article.
  - lucideer 10y ago
    In this case, I get the sense the editor may have cut a fair bit of content as well as adding a contradictory title, from a possibly reasonably OK original draft.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    I see this comment a lot on poorly titled articles. My question, what job title is typically responsible for writing headlines?
    - onewaystreet 10y ago
      Copy editor
- polynomial 10y ago
  Articles and headlines are written by different people with different roles and different goals.
somedangedname 10y ago
I'm no expert but surveying the number of kept hives doesn't tell you anything about the health of those hives or the total number of living bees. If colonies are indeed collapsing, beekeepers may need to start more hives to deal with greater attrition rates.
- beardicus 10y ago
  The article does address this fact, though the headline writer chose to omit any such subtlety.
reidacdc 10y ago
That's an infuriating headline. The upshot of the article is, the bees that were recently in the news for newly being endangered are a small number of species in a geographically confined area. The commercially-important bees that are important for pollination are not endangered, and while mortality for these bees remains anomalously high due to colony collapse disorder, available stocks remain high because beekeepers have largely compensated for the additional mortality with larger investments in breeding additional queens and splitting of hives. This effort is reflected in the cost of honey, which has doubled since 2006, and the cost of commercial pollination services, which has also risen. I suppose it's a useful description of the scope of the new "endangered" status, but to my mind, there's a pretty big difference between "the bees are doing just fine" and "commercially important bee populations remain stable because the economic burden of colony collapse disorder has been passed on to consumers of bee services".
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Another day, another rung down the ladder of journalistic quality from the WaPo.
- beardicus 10y ago
  Agreed, annoying headline. I was ready to write some angry rant in response, but at least the article actually does address (unlike the last time this same article was written) the economic realities of constantly treading water to keep your bee population up.
- stormcloud 10y ago
  I think the headline of this article should be considered in the context it's presented, namely the context where I've seen several variations on the same headline "Bees added to US endangered species list for the first time" shared dozens of times across social media. Personally, I find that headline to be much more infuriating than this articles.
- tptacek 10y ago
  The bees that are used to pollinate crops and produce honey are livestock, and --- the central argument of the post --- there are more of them today than there were when the CCD phenomenon began. The price of honey is a relevant counterargument, but demand for honey has also increased, and there are cyclical changes in honey bee output. In the middle of the time period we're talking about, there was also apparently a worldwide honey shortage that was tied primarily to poor crop production; honey is a global commodity, so that also impacts prices.
M_Grey 10y ago
As with so many of WaPo's articles lately, I'm at a loss as to whether this is clumsy propaganda, or just incredibly inept reporting.
- lvs 10y ago
  Yes, sadly, the Bezos Post is just a shade of what the Washington Post once was.
EGreg 10y ago
They are talking about commercial bees. Not bees in the wild, which are dwindling. Just like tree farms don't mean rainforests aren't disappearing. People are turning the world into farms and this article is oblivious.
- tptacek 10y ago
  There are no North American wild honey bees. Honey bees are an introduced species. The last feral North American honey bees were wiped out in the 1980s, by the Varroa mite. There are thousands of North American bee species that aren't honey bees. Some of them may be threatened by any number of factors (most likely: habitat encroachment). But an important thing to remember about wild bees and the honey bee CCD phenomenon is that many wild bee species, including important pollinators, aren't social. Mason bees, for instance, don't have colonies: every female makes her own nest. CCD is a social bee phenomenon. I think? it's possible that there are no North American native social bees that overwinter entire colonies the way honey bees do. For instance, all the bombus bees have colonies that last only a year (the colony produces new queens, which start entire new colonies). If that's the case, CCD is a phenomenon that definitionally only affects foreign introduced livestock bees.
  - beardicus 10y ago
    > The last feral North American honey bees were wiped out in the 1980s, by the Varroa mite. This is likely overstated a bit, though I can't find any recent definitive surveys of persistent feral honeybee hives. The best I can do is this: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150362 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... but they don't actually test any feral hives, just attempt to determine factors that could lead to survival with varroa infestation. Anecdotally I know of a few feral hives that have survived multiple years in trees and barns, but I can't rule out the possibility that they're "seeded" by swarms from managed hives every spring (they're too far away for me to inspect regularly). Also, Youtube has a few folks doing cutouts of wild hives that have taken up residence in houses and sheds, and there's clear evidence of multiple years of work in some of these hives. A bit of a nitpick, I admit, but I'd go with "mostly wiped out" personally.
helthanatos 10y ago
I thought this article would have to africanized bees. Is anyone else worried about that? Commercial bees are just fine this says but it's only talking about population size.
lvs 10y ago
This headline brought to you by the pesticide lobby, science be damned. Seems they're making inroads with the Washington Post.
maxsilver 10y ago
This seems a lot like Y2K syndrome -- Lots of experts working really hard to avert a crisis, and if/when they mostly succeed, it gives regular folks the impression that there wasn't much of an issue in the first place, and it was all overblown to begin with. "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"
dvh 10y ago
Coworker's husband is a beekeeper. Recently he read in the newspaper that in his region EU granted few million euros for bee-reintroducing program. He had some losses so he went to local government office to ask if he as a small beekeeper is eligible for subsidies. They told him the money will only be used for advertisement to recruit new beekeepers.

36 points by em3rgent0rdr 10y ago

Bee colonies is a somewhat optimistic number. US honey production is a more dramatic drop from 2000. http://www.capitalpress.com/Nation_World/Nation/20150325/us-honey-production-up-in-2014-but-colony-losses-continue http://www.capitalpress.com/Nation_World/Nation/20150325/us-... even though that chart looks almost flat from 2000 - 2016 Also of note, this is not in a vacuum the EPA has been active over the last few years. https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/epa-actions-protect-pollinators https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/epa-actions-protec...

JauntyHatAngle 10y ago

Uh, I thought it was the wild bees that we were concerned about. And from the article about wild bees: "Of course, the discussion above concerns only commercial bees that are managed by humans and businesses. Wild bees — whether they're honeybees or one of our 4,000 other native bee species — face different difficulties. If those species suffer die-offs, there's nobody around to breed new queens and help them recover. Wild bees are on their own. Recent research has shown that the use of certain insecticides called neonicotinoids has been linked to declines in wild bee populations. But assessing the true magnitude of the effect is difficult, because it's a lot harder to survey wild bee populations than domesticated ones." So basically, move along, bit of a nothing article.

tptacek 10y ago
Wild honeybees have been extinct in the US for decades, owing to the Varroa mite.
- tupshin 10y ago
  Citation would be nice. This article talks about them having rebounded after near extinction: http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/08/some-honeybee-colonies-adapt-wake-deadly-mites http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/08/some-honeybee-coloni...

lucideer 10y ago

I don't understand the purpose of this article. The headline seems to be pushing the message "relax, forget about it, everything's fine". The content of the article is much more ambiguous. It starts by saying a Hawaiian bee has been added to the endangered list, follows by explaining the effects of colony collapse disorder: little change in commercial bee numbers, harsh economic times for beekeepers, unmeasured and likely dire change for wild bees. There is no conclusion to the article, but the bees do not appear to be "doing just fine"...

onewaystreet 10y ago
Authors for major news sites don't write their own headlines which is why there is often a disconnect with the actual content of the article.
- lucideer 10y ago
  In this case, I get the sense the editor may have cut a fair bit of content as well as adding a contradictory title, from a possibly reasonably OK original draft.
- ethbro 10y ago
  I see this comment a lot on poorly titled articles. My question, what job title is typically responsible for writing headlines?
  - onewaystreet 10y ago
    Copy editor
polynomial 10y ago
Articles and headlines are written by different people with different roles and different goals.

somedangedname 10y ago

I'm no expert but surveying the number of kept hives doesn't tell you anything about the health of those hives or the total number of living bees. If colonies are indeed collapsing, beekeepers may need to start more hives to deal with greater attrition rates.

beardicus 10y ago
The article does address this fact, though the headline writer chose to omit any such subtlety.

reidacdc 10y ago

That's an infuriating headline. The upshot of the article is, the bees that were recently in the news for newly being endangered are a small number of species in a geographically confined area. The commercially-important bees that are important for pollination are not endangered, and while mortality for these bees remains anomalously high due to colony collapse disorder, available stocks remain high because beekeepers have largely compensated for the additional mortality with larger investments in breeding additional queens and splitting of hives. This effort is reflected in the cost of honey, which has doubled since 2006, and the cost of commercial pollination services, which has also risen. I suppose it's a useful description of the scope of the new "endangered" status, but to my mind, there's a pretty big difference between "the bees are doing just fine" and "commercially important bee populations remain stable because the economic burden of colony collapse disorder has been passed on to consumers of bee services".

M_Grey 10y ago
Another day, another rung down the ladder of journalistic quality from the WaPo.
beardicus 10y ago
Agreed, annoying headline. I was ready to write some angry rant in response, but at least the article actually does address (unlike the last time this same article was written) the economic realities of constantly treading water to keep your bee population up.
stormcloud 10y ago
I think the headline of this article should be considered in the context it's presented, namely the context where I've seen several variations on the same headline "Bees added to US endangered species list for the first time" shared dozens of times across social media. Personally, I find that headline to be much more infuriating than this articles.
tptacek 10y ago
The bees that are used to pollinate crops and produce honey are livestock, and --- the central argument of the post --- there are more of them today than there were when the CCD phenomenon began. The price of honey is a relevant counterargument, but demand for honey has also increased, and there are cyclical changes in honey bee output. In the middle of the time period we're talking about, there was also apparently a worldwide honey shortage that was tied primarily to poor crop production; honey is a global commodity, so that also impacts prices.

M_Grey 10y ago

As with so many of WaPo's articles lately, I'm at a loss as to whether this is clumsy propaganda, or just incredibly inept reporting.

lvs 10y ago
Yes, sadly, the Bezos Post is just a shade of what the Washington Post once was.

EGreg 10y ago

They are talking about commercial bees. Not bees in the wild, which are dwindling. Just like tree farms don't mean rainforests aren't disappearing. People are turning the world into farms and this article is oblivious.

tptacek 10y ago
There are no North American wild honey bees. Honey bees are an introduced species. The last feral North American honey bees were wiped out in the 1980s, by the Varroa mite. There are thousands of North American bee species that aren't honey bees. Some of them may be threatened by any number of factors (most likely: habitat encroachment). But an important thing to remember about wild bees and the honey bee CCD phenomenon is that many wild bee species, including important pollinators, aren't social. Mason bees, for instance, don't have colonies: every female makes her own nest. CCD is a social bee phenomenon. I think? it's possible that there are no North American native social bees that overwinter entire colonies the way honey bees do. For instance, all the bombus bees have colonies that last only a year (the colony produces new queens, which start entire new colonies). If that's the case, CCD is a phenomenon that definitionally only affects foreign introduced livestock bees.
- beardicus 10y ago
  > The last feral North American honey bees were wiped out in the 1980s, by the Varroa mite. This is likely overstated a bit, though I can't find any recent definitive surveys of persistent feral honeybee hives. The best I can do is this: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150362 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... but they don't actually test any feral hives, just attempt to determine factors that could lead to survival with varroa infestation. Anecdotally I know of a few feral hives that have survived multiple years in trees and barns, but I can't rule out the possibility that they're "seeded" by swarms from managed hives every spring (they're too far away for me to inspect regularly). Also, Youtube has a few folks doing cutouts of wild hives that have taken up residence in houses and sheds, and there's clear evidence of multiple years of work in some of these hives. A bit of a nitpick, I admit, but I'd go with "mostly wiped out" personally.

helthanatos 10y ago

I thought this article would have to africanized bees. Is anyone else worried about that? Commercial bees are just fine this says but it's only talking about population size.

lvs 10y ago

This headline brought to you by the pesticide lobby, science be damned. Seems they're making inroads with the Washington Post.

maxsilver 10y ago

This seems a lot like Y2K syndrome -- Lots of experts working really hard to avert a crisis, and if/when they mostly succeed, it gives regular folks the impression that there wasn't much of an issue in the first place, and it was all overblown to begin with. "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"

dvh 10y ago

Coworker's husband is a beekeeper. Recently he read in the newspaper that in his region EU granted few million euros for bee-reintroducing program. He had some losses so he went to local government office to ask if he as a small beekeeper is eligible for subsidies. They told him the money will only be used for advertisement to recruit new beekeepers.