7 ms·

> "…the overall increase is largely the result of constant replenishment of losses, the study showed." Very misleading headline. The bees are not bouncing back

by 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 ago
Ahh, 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 ago
  Colony 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 ago
    This is the chance of an entirely colony dying out, right, not just the per-capita mortality rate?
    - pyre 9y ago
      The percentage of colonies that don't survive the winter.
    - jly 9y ago
      Yes, per-capita rates are tricky with honeybees since they adjust their hive numbers significantly during the year and slim down for winter and potential summer nectar dearth. Measuring colony survival is what is really important.
bpodgursky 9y ago
> humans are splitting up stronger hives into weaker hives That's not really an accurate way of describing beekeeping procedure. Yes hives are split, but that's how hives reproduce in nature. "Weaker" hives just start smaller and grow. Not that CCD isn't worth looking into, but it's not like the average hive comes out weaker.
- tptacek 9y ago
  My understanding is that CCD is defined by an increase in overwintering losses of whole hives. But overwintering losses of hives are something that happens with or without a new disease, and represent essentially a livestock management problem for beekeepers. Losses are made up for by splitting hives and introducing new queens, which are bought on an open market. You can see the price for a new queen right now; it's low tens of dollars.
  - vanattab 9y ago
    How are the queens produced? Do they naturally just occur in the hive or are there ways to trigger embryonic bees to become queens?
    - patio11 9y ago
      Fascinatingly, you can intentionally induce it. First Googleable cite I could find: http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/queenrear.html http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/queenrear.html Agriculture: security research as applied to biology.
      - adrianratnapala 9y ago
        Life is information embodied physically to take care of itself. Starting with the first vaguely reproducing whatever, all the way down to us DNA-encoded eukaryotes. It should not be surprising if some aspects of biology are analogous to aspects of computing. In fact it isn't even an analogy.
    - jly 9y ago
_rpd 9y ago
Hive splitting is quite a natural process. New "weak" hives quickly become "strong" hives. A single queen bee can lay hundreds and even thousands of eggs per day. During late spring, hive population doubles every few weeks. You can read a brief overview here ... http://americanbeejournal.com/beekeeping-by-the-numbers-2/ http://americanbeejournal.com/beekeeping-by-the-numbers-2/
tptacek 9y ago
Honey bees in the United States are livestock. Their existence on this continent is mediated entirely by our actions.
- tbihl 9y ago
  Do you mean to say that the ones I see in grass and parks are some beekeeper's? I'm doubtful, but that would be pretty interesting. Are there that many amateur beekeeper's? I figured they were much less common a backyard project than chickens.
  - Neliquat 9y ago
    Pretty common, i know of 3 in my rural neighborhood.
  - jly 9y ago
    There are very many backyard beekeepers, even in urban areas. I have a pair of hives on my small city lot and most neighbors don't even know. This isn't uncommon these days. Having said that, there are wild bees, and bees 'escape' from beekeepers by swarming and forming new hives on their own. They try to reproduce by creating new hives as frequently as they can.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      I guess my question would be, why should I care about isolated feral honey bee colonies? They're not a native species; they don't "belong" here. As long as beekeepers can cost-effectively maintain their pollination capabilities (perhaps at marginally higher cost), what's the public policy implication of CCD?
      - lostlogin 9y ago
        Poison builds up in comb and honey from the agents required to treat mites. It's making beekeeping harder, and the relationship between bee keepers harder (e.g. People treat diseases out of sync with each other, messing up the treatment process as bees drift to each others hives, spreading disease). Pollination as a service is expensive and lastly, it's a bit sad walking past a feral colony that's been there many years and seeing it dead.
radiorental 9y ago
This is simply not true. As other have noted, splitting is a natural process of beekeeping. however, I've noticed a discernible change in the beekeeping profession in the last 10 years. To take a step back - there is a huge variation in bee characteristics from hive to hive. What I've noticed is that package and nuc suppliers (aka bee breeders) are far less likely to treat hives. And it has become near impossible to buy 'traditional' chemical bee disease medications. The prevailing modus operandi these days is to leverage natural evolutionary processes. I.e. let weak hive fail and therefor let undesirable genes phase out.
- jly 9y ago
  This shift is happening, but I see it far too slowly, still. At least in my area, the dominate beekeepers who do it for commercial enterprise (and have the majority of all hives) still treat because they are protecting their income. Hobbyists are more quickly adopting treatment-free methods which I think is accelerating this trend.
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    I wonder if this is region specific. It isn't a thing here in New Zealand. My understanding is that the US has a very genetically diverse bee population with many different genetic strains available. A strength and weakness of being remote down here is that we don't necessarily get the diseases, but we don't have the genetic pool available to fight diseases when they arrive. The mites are a colossal problem here.
- roel_v 9y ago
  "As other have noted, splitting is a natural process of beekeeping." Uh, splitting is very much not natural (at least, I'm taking this to mean artificial splits - if you're saying swarming is a form of splitting, which isn't unreasonable even if it's not the wording I'd use, then disregards this comment). It's part of 20th century beekeeping, yes, but swarming is natural bee behavior, and unnatural practices like splitting, queen clipping, brood cutting, sugar feeding etc. are creating fragile colonies with weak resistance that depend on human intervention (including chemical varroa treatment) to survive. And this is not just ideology, this is the trend in all apiculture/bee entomology journals over the last say 5 years.
gwenzek 9y ago
Totally agree with you that the title is misleading. Commercial bee hive number increased by 3% year on year, but there is still a lot of CCD. So it's not clear if "Bees are bouncing back" or if beekeepers are getting better at preserving them or if USA just had a nicer weather.

by kneath 9y ago

civilian 9y ago

Ahh, 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 ago
Colony 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 ago
  This is the chance of an entirely colony dying out, right, not just the per-capita mortality rate?
  - pyre 9y ago
    The percentage of colonies that don't survive the winter.
  - jly 9y ago
    Yes, per-capita rates are tricky with honeybees since they adjust their hive numbers significantly during the year and slim down for winter and potential summer nectar dearth. Measuring colony survival is what is really important.

bpodgursky 9y ago

> humans are splitting up stronger hives into weaker hives That's not really an accurate way of describing beekeeping procedure. Yes hives are split, but that's how hives reproduce in nature. "Weaker" hives just start smaller and grow. Not that CCD isn't worth looking into, but it's not like the average hive comes out weaker.

tptacek 9y ago
My understanding is that CCD is defined by an increase in overwintering losses of whole hives. But overwintering losses of hives are something that happens with or without a new disease, and represent essentially a livestock management problem for beekeepers. Losses are made up for by splitting hives and introducing new queens, which are bought on an open market. You can see the price for a new queen right now; it's low tens of dollars.
- vanattab 9y ago
  How are the queens produced? Do they naturally just occur in the hive or are there ways to trigger embryonic bees to become queens?
  - patio11 9y ago
    Fascinatingly, you can intentionally induce it. First Googleable cite I could find: http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/queenrear.html http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/queenrear.html Agriculture: security research as applied to biology.
    - adrianratnapala 9y ago
      Life is information embodied physically to take care of itself. Starting with the first vaguely reproducing whatever, all the way down to us DNA-encoded eukaryotes. It should not be surprising if some aspects of biology are analogous to aspects of computing. In fact it isn't even an analogy.
  - jly 9y ago

_rpd 9y ago

Hive splitting is quite a natural process. New "weak" hives quickly become "strong" hives. A single queen bee can lay hundreds and even thousands of eggs per day. During late spring, hive population doubles every few weeks. You can read a brief overview here ... http://americanbeejournal.com/beekeeping-by-the-numbers-2/ http://americanbeejournal.com/beekeeping-by-the-numbers-2/

tptacek 9y ago

Honey bees in the United States are livestock. Their existence on this continent is mediated entirely by our actions.

tbihl 9y ago
Do you mean to say that the ones I see in grass and parks are some beekeeper's? I'm doubtful, but that would be pretty interesting. Are there that many amateur beekeeper's? I figured they were much less common a backyard project than chickens.
- Neliquat 9y ago
  Pretty common, i know of 3 in my rural neighborhood.
- jly 9y ago
  There are very many backyard beekeepers, even in urban areas. I have a pair of hives on my small city lot and most neighbors don't even know. This isn't uncommon these days. Having said that, there are wild bees, and bees 'escape' from beekeepers by swarming and forming new hives on their own. They try to reproduce by creating new hives as frequently as they can.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I guess my question would be, why should I care about isolated feral honey bee colonies? They're not a native species; they don't "belong" here. As long as beekeepers can cost-effectively maintain their pollination capabilities (perhaps at marginally higher cost), what's the public policy implication of CCD?
    - lostlogin 9y ago
      Poison builds up in comb and honey from the agents required to treat mites. It's making beekeeping harder, and the relationship between bee keepers harder (e.g. People treat diseases out of sync with each other, messing up the treatment process as bees drift to each others hives, spreading disease). Pollination as a service is expensive and lastly, it's a bit sad walking past a feral colony that's been there many years and seeing it dead.

radiorental 9y ago

This is simply not true. As other have noted, splitting is a natural process of beekeeping. however, I've noticed a discernible change in the beekeeping profession in the last 10 years. To take a step back - there is a huge variation in bee characteristics from hive to hive. What I've noticed is that package and nuc suppliers (aka bee breeders) are far less likely to treat hives. And it has become near impossible to buy 'traditional' chemical bee disease medications. The prevailing modus operandi these days is to leverage natural evolutionary processes. I.e. let weak hive fail and therefor let undesirable genes phase out.

jly 9y ago
This shift is happening, but I see it far too slowly, still. At least in my area, the dominate beekeepers who do it for commercial enterprise (and have the majority of all hives) still treat because they are protecting their income. Hobbyists are more quickly adopting treatment-free methods which I think is accelerating this trend.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  I wonder if this is region specific. It isn't a thing here in New Zealand. My understanding is that the US has a very genetically diverse bee population with many different genetic strains available. A strength and weakness of being remote down here is that we don't necessarily get the diseases, but we don't have the genetic pool available to fight diseases when they arrive. The mites are a colossal problem here.
roel_v 9y ago
"As other have noted, splitting is a natural process of beekeeping." Uh, splitting is very much not natural (at least, I'm taking this to mean artificial splits - if you're saying swarming is a form of splitting, which isn't unreasonable even if it's not the wording I'd use, then disregards this comment). It's part of 20th century beekeeping, yes, but swarming is natural bee behavior, and unnatural practices like splitting, queen clipping, brood cutting, sugar feeding etc. are creating fragile colonies with weak resistance that depend on human intervention (including chemical varroa treatment) to survive. And this is not just ideology, this is the trend in all apiculture/bee entomology journals over the last say 5 years.

gwenzek 9y ago

Totally agree with you that the title is misleading. Commercial bee hive number increased by 3% year on year, but there is still a lot of CCD. So it's not clear if "Bees are bouncing back" or if beekeepers are getting better at preserving them or if USA just had a nicer weather.