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Bees Are Bouncing Back from Colony Collapse Disorder
- debt 9y agoBeads?
- vlunkr 9y agoThey don't allow you to have jokes in here.
- macintux 9y agoBest headline I've seen all day, but the piece is much less cheery.
- cableshaft 9y agoWhatever decrease in losses they have from the disorder, my puppy is making up for by eating them. Or at least it seems like it. I have to make sure he doesn't get near any when I take him on walks and he still manages to get a couple here and there usually. I can't believe he hasn't been stung enough to stop going after them by now.
- zeofig 9y agoMaybe he gets high off the stings as well as enjoying the flavour.
- mr-ron 9y agoAre you sure they are bees and not wasps?
- netzone 9y agoNot sure why this question is always asked on threads like this. Bees and wasps look very different, you can usually tell them apart at a distance of 5 meters, maybe more if you have time to watch it for it's behaviour while flying.
- obsurveyor 9y agoFrom my anecdotal experience, a lot of people in the US don't know the difference between a honey bee and a yellow jacket wasp.
- DrScump 9y agoHas he considered authoring a paper on the subject? I mean, if a cat can publish one[0], it would be embarrassing to the canine race if dogs can't. [0] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/philosophy-journal-corrects-35-year-old-article-written-cat http://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/philosophy-journal-cor...
- mrfregg 9y agoDo not forget Dr.Olivia Doll: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/how-one-smart-doggo-got-editorial-boards-seven-medical-journals https://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/how-one-smart-doggo-g...
- kneath 9y ago> "…the overall increase is largely the result of constant replenishment of losses, the study showed." Very misleading headline. The bees are not bouncing back, humans are splitting up stronger hives into weaker hives. Kinda like saying humankind is beating cancer by having more babies in third-world countries.
- civilian 9y agoAhh, I don't think so. The _rate_ of CCD has decreased since last year. If we were "splitting up stronger hives into weaker hives", shouldn't CCD have stayed the same or increased? > The number of hives lost to Colony Collapse Disorder, a phenomenon of disappearing bees that has raised concerns among farmers and scientists for a decade, was 84,430 in this year’s first quarter, down 27 percent from a year earlier. Year-over-year losses declined by the same percentage in April through June, the most recent data in the survey. //edit: but idk, maybe I'm confused here too. At the very least, we've figured out a way to breed bees quickly so that we can outpace CCD?
- _rpd 9y agoColony Collapse Disorder is roughly defined as unexpected colony death over winter. A previous base rate of 10% colony loss increased to 15-25% colony loss during different years. There are lots of theories about why, but note that wild swarm mortality during winter is over 80%. CCD is a problem in domestic hives, and may very well be a consequence of some aspect of modern beekeeping practices.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoThis is the chance of an entirely colony dying out, right, not just the per-capita mortality rate?
- pyre 9y agoThe percentage of colonies that don't survive the winter.
- pmurT 9y agoMites have been the largest issue and will likely take decades for the genetics to select out for an uneasy balance. In the mean time, the commercial guys can't keep doing business as usual and have to cleanup their act - they had a nice free ride for a while
- bluejekyll 9y agoThe article makes it sound like it's not clear that is the issue. By the end it makes it sound like they really want to say it's pesticides, but the farming industry relies on that so much for "good looking" food that perhaps beekeepers are worried that if they point at that, farmers will be angry with them. EDIT: to be clear, I'm talking about what was written in this article. I know nothing about the past mite issues in feral bee populations. Not debating that.
- tptacek 9y agoVarroa destructor mites are widely believed to have driven North American feral honeybees (themselves an introduced, invasive species) to extinction almost 2 decades ago. If there's controversy about this, I'd love to see sources.
- jly 9y agoThis is absolutely not true. A common and unfortunately widespread misconception by many in the beekeeping world and it's unfortunate these ideas persist. This is a landmark census of a known population of feral bees before and after Varroa introduction: ~25 years apart [1]. The evolved methods of this particular group for Varroa defense are not the typical methods (hygienic behavior) that are seen with modern treatment-free survivor bees. There are now known to be a diverse array of natural methods that honeybees survive in the wild against Varroa. A couple of very recent papers survey these [2][3]. The last 5-10 years have seen an explosion of primary literature research on the topic, as well as queen breeders all over NA producing bees with genetic traits that allow them to survive without our help. You may also want to peruse this recent and passionate plea from one of the top honeybee researches in the world to move towards beekeeping methods that let bees better survive in the wild and stop circumventing their efforts [4]. Honeybees survive in the wild in North America despite beekeeper activities, not because of them. [1] https://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/abs/2007/01/m6063/m6063.html https://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/abs/2007/01/m6063/... [2] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150362 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... [3] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eva.12448/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eva.12448/abstrac... [4] http://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/darwinian-beekeeping http://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/darwinian-beekeeping
- Noumenon72 9y agoBees have somebody watching out for them. The insects that have gone missing from our insect traps and windshields are still gone. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insect...
- vanattab 9y agoThe link is broken. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insect...
- Noumenon72 9y agoShucks, I noticed 4 minutes after you posted. Thanks.
- rpenm 9y agoPeople are worried about the wrong bees. Hundreds of native bee species are in decline - possibly due to pesticides and loss of habitat. An enormous number of plants - including many crops - are dependent on native bees for pollination.
- sametmax 9y agoDon't worry, the people selling you the products killing the bees will soon sell you a solution to pollinate your crop without bees.
- EGreg 9y agoWhat about the wild bees?
- lostlogin 9y agoFeral ones are basically all dead here in New Zealand. They don't survive long in the wild. This may not be true where you are.
- EGreg 9y agoSo basically this article is like an article that celebrates that tigers are "BOUNCING BACK" even though all the tigers in the wild are dead in many places, and only the ones in zoos live on? WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO.
- BucketSort 9y agoGood work bees! I was feeling guilty for wishing them all dead one birthday wish after I got stung.
- honestoHeminway 9y agoIf only we could breed mites that would die off like those genetically modified mosquitos. Or mites that only live from mites.
- mbgerring 9y agoAll of these articles only ever focus on commercial bee populations. I'm a lot more interested in what's happening to wild bees.
- jansho 9y agoNobody mentions this reason to love bees: they make excellent inspiration. I have a big deadline coming up and just moved my desk to face the garden. Watching the bumble bees nosing around the lavender patch is keeping me more industrious than the carrot/stick!
- lostlogin 9y agoTry putting a bit of honey out and watch how many come. They can smell out honey to rob from a long way off.
- jansho 9y agoIm not sure if this is tongue-in-cheek (I was serious in my earlier post) but why not. For science!
- lostlogin 9y agoIt wasn't. I was extracting honey from comb one weekend. Shut the place up and left it on kitchen bench draining into a bowl. Came back to half a dozen in the honey, a couple on the bench and others randomly smashing into windows looking for gaps. Even once covered and sealed I could hear them at night getting inside. It was like a version of Hitchcock's Birds, but non terrifying.
- donatj 9y agoI know it's completely circumstantial but I have noticed sooo many more bees around my yard this year over the last several that it's given me hope!
- Dowwie 9y agoOne source claims that bee populations are bouncing back. I think I'd like to see more scientific sources assert this before I believe the good news
- digitalzombie 9y agoReddit have a thread about this and apparently it's misleading and that the Bees are still dying. I can have a cancer survival rate of 15% and get a 2% bounce back with 17% doesn't mean everything is swell.
- ohiovr 9y agoSo all those scientists in Nature and the big science journals were just chicken littles. To know the real story, get it from the pesticide makers!