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Losing bees would suck so bad. Lots of plants co evolved, requiring pollinators. Orchids are the weirdest, with special moths unique to them [1]. But so much st
by jfoutz 9y ago
Losing bees would suck so bad. Lots of plants co evolved, requiring pollinators. Orchids are the weirdest, with special moths unique to them [1]. But so much stuff depends on bees. A whole bunch of kinds of fruit trees, different kinds of beans, even celery.
Hand pollination is possible, of course, but that seems like such a pita. Perhaps it's possible to automate.
We have a perfectly good, self optimizing system that constantly moves to optimality. If we could just lighten up a little, not push quite so hard, or even just do localized trials of intensive use pesticides and fertilizers, we could find a balance of what the system can support.
Either go slow and look for local optimizations that are then distributed widely, or engineer immunity, or both.
Ugh. I guess if it was easy, it wouldn't be a problem.
- theoh 9y agoThere's no science that says any part of the Earth-human system "constantly moves to optimality". Like, literally any part. It's an out-of-control rollercoaster that we may or may not be able to steward to our liking. "optimality" is a human construct.
- drdeca 9y agoI think steward/stewardship was a good choice of word on your part there
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- nnfy 9y agoI agree, and would extend that to the earth system in general. The universe does not care for good, bad, optimal, or suboptimal; the universe simply is.
- unityByFreedom 9y agoDarwin might disagree. Perhaps you can say evolution is accidental, without intention. Quite a happy accident in my opinion.
- Eerie 9y agoA billion years of living things eating each other. Quite happy, indeed.
- IanCal 9y agoEvolution does not necessarily move towards optimal systems, by any definition. It may find local optima, but the process has no guarantees it's moving towards a global optimum.
- splawn 9y agoI am guessing your downvoters have never heard of mass extinction events. EDIT: Here.... let me google up an example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event
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- dredmorbius 9y agoHow would you define "optimality"? Consider: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_power_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_power_principle
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- godzilla82 9y agoOptimal for whom? May be it does move to optimality, but not for humans, so human science does not find it.
- Houshalter 9y agoHoney bees aren't native to North America at least. If they went extinct, native plants would be fine.
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- HarryHirsch 9y agoIt's likely that bumblebees are equally affected.
- saalweachter 9y agoWell, sort of. Bumblebees are probably as susceptible as honeybees, but native bees will preferentially eat from native plants. If most farmers aren't spraying many native plants, the exposure will be less.
- tmnvix 9y ago> ...but native bees will preferentially eat from native plants. Do you have a source for how significant this factor is? I would like to believe it, but it sounds a lot like wishful thinking.
- saalweachter 9y agoNot really; my source is a lecture at a beekeeping meetup (where the lecturers range from top academics to 'a little bit crazy'). I believe the study in question was trying to assess how honeybees, an invasive species, impacted native bee populations; the study found little impact, and attributed it to the preferential feeding. (The replanting of large swaths of America with invasive plant species, such as wheat, presumably does have an impact on native bee populations.) I'd also note that many native bees also have a much shorter lifecycle - they will be active for a very brief time at a very specific time of the year, when their target plants are flowering, and then they lay their eggs, which will remain dormant / develop slowly for nearly the full year, to hatch again at the appropriate time. This means that you can successfully avoid killing them by timing your pesticide application to avoid flowering plants. Honeybees, on the other hand, are active year round (though confined to their hives in the winter). A larger threat mentioned in the talk to native bees was actually global warming. Many native bees operate in narrow bands of latitude, only going so far north and south. With the increases in average temperature, we're seeing the southern border of many native bee species move north ... but for whatever reason, not the northern border. I'm not sure why that would be (maybe there are plant species they depend on which spread too slowly?), but it creates a worrisome picture of their habitat being squeezed out of existence.
- tomp 9y agoAnother weird and fascinating co-evolution of plants ant their pollinators is the genus Ficus (e.g. edible fig plants). The tiny wasps that pollinate the fruit actually die inside it, while a new generation is hatched, mates, then the males burrow a tunnel out of the fig and die, why females continue the cycle.
- _delirium 9y agoWhile true in terms of how they initially evolved, in terms of how they are cultivated, figs don't necessarily require pollination by wasps (or at all). Parthenocarpy, the bearing of fruit without pollination, was probably first cultivated in fig trees thousands of years ago, and is still common today. Some fig cultivars do require pollination to bear fruit, but many don't.
- chjohasbrouck 9y ago> While true ... This just broke my brain. I think it's time for me to go to bed...
- thecrazyone 9y agogood one, I skipped right past not even noticing it. It's so amazing that we all think differently :)
- dEnigma 9y agoHow can you go to bed if you're still stuck in the loop?
- jschwartzi 9y agoLuckily he had his watchdog timer enabled, and so was able to detect the tight loop and soft reset.
- rl3 9y agoWe can always just replace bees with robotic replacements as soon as technology allows. What could go wrong?
- avckp 9y agoNeed for more processing power, more manufacturing units, more electricity. However it's already a self-sufficient efficient eco system only if we could stop deliberately destroying.
- Jach 9y agoJust CRISPR existing bees to be more resilient.
- jacobkg 9y agoReference to an episode of "Black Mirror"
- PacificSettler 9y ago>What could go wrong? What happens when birds try to eat the fake bees? What happens when they break? Do we just leave them there? What would their batteries made of? Any dangerous material Lithum is not something you want on your water supply
- abraae 9y ago> Hand pollination is possible, of course You must be kidding. I can't think of many things that would less possible to do by hand. We have 10 acres which is mostly in manuka (i.e. manuka honey), spaced a metre apart from each other. When I stand next to any one of those trees and watch the bees flitting hither and thither doing their thing, I am just amazed by nature.
- quicklyfrozen 9y agoIt's been done by hand in China. Not sure if we can replicate that in the west though.
- bogshaker 9y agoThey were actually better at it than the bees from memory. Wage costs I'm sure would be an issue. Sounds like a crazy idea, but can't we just stop using pesticides that have provably been shown to harm a critical part of our food chain? I don't particularly care if Bayer loses profit, or if I have to pay a more realistic price for fruit and veg.
- hvidgaard 9y ago> can't we just stop using pesticides that have provably been shown to harm a critical part of our food chain? We could, but there is money lost in the process. Both for the people who produce, but also consumers. This needs regulation to become a reality.
- ddebernardy 9y agoYou never know, someone might come up with a mini-drone to do it at some point in the future...
- andrepd 9y agoSomething something Black Mirror.
- 9y ago
- unclebucknasty 9y agoOddly, I happened to have just read something which stated that roughly 2/3 of what bees pollinate in the U.S. are almond crops. A quick Google reveals that almonds do indeed require a lot of bees, in addition to water.
- tptacek 9y agoThere is essentially no current risk that almond farmers will lose access to the livestock bees that pollinate their crops.
- unclebucknasty 9y agoWell, I wasn't claiming there was, but not quite sure what to infer from your comment. I mean, I know (from recent reading) that there's a fairly intensive operation to maintain hives exclusively for almond farming. Are you saying these are not affected by CCD, neonics, or whatever?
- tptacek 9y agoCCD manifests itself as greater overwintering losses to colonies. Bee farmers have lots of colonies. They can split colonies and buy new queens. It's not like Dutch Elm disease; it doesn't kill all the bees.
- unclebucknasty 9y agoI see. So are you saying that the "bee problem" is overblown and we can farm our way out of it?
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- nthcolumn 9y ago'Suck so bad' is a holy understatement. The bees are going nowhere right? How about the idea that we allow the owners of these corporations such as Monsanto exist after their having continued to wage ecological terrorism on the world to fill their own already burgeoning pockets when the signs were so obvious? What use are they to society? There should be fines and there will be fines. Chapter 11 sized fines. Stop immediately and shove your poison up your collective arses.
- ShrubberyKnight 9y agoThe use of a corporation like Monsanto...control. Food used to be food. Now, it's patented ingredients. Control of food, along with control of health care, currency, education, war, religion, entertainment, water, the media... Instead of gradual, spontaneous unifying of the world's Nations, it is being hastened, directed by unseen hands. "GMO is the way to go." Illegal to collect rain water in some U.S. States. Fiat money and centralized banks. Control. Banks too big to fail. The countries with which we are at war do not yet have central banks. Dropping population to a more manageable number.