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'The bees are dying so we should all become beekeepers!' is imho, one of the biggest failures of science-communication in the past decades. Honey bees are doin

'The bees are dying so we should all become beekeepers!' is imho, one of the biggest failures of science-communication in the past decades. Honey bees are doing comparatively OK, for honey bees to die out it would require a much greater catastrophe than what we're seeing right now. Honey bees are quasi-domesticated with humans pushing colony size, it would be like milk-cows dying out. It's native bees that are being killed off by pesticides, monocultures, and loss of habitat (due to humans encroaching, or feral honey bees pushing out native bees). Some examples: >On organic farms near natural habitat, we found that native bee communities could provide full pollination services even for a crop with heavy pollination requirements (e.g., watermelon, Citrullus lanatus), without the intervention of managed honey bees. All other farms, however, experienced greatly reduced diversity and abundance of native bees, resulting in insufficient pollination services from native bees alone. We found that diversity was essential for sustaining the service, because of year-to-year variation in community composition from https://www.pnas.org/content/99/26/16812.short https://www.pnas.org/content/99/26/16812.short >Recent studies suggest that the presence of large numbers of introduced [honey bee] managed colonies can threaten wild bee populations. Therefore, proposals to exclude A. mellifera colonies from protected areas have arisen. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016953471930117X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016953471... and so on

mrweasel 6y ago
Exactly, and don't get me wrong, I do keep honey bees, but they aren't in danger in most countries. The Danish beekeeping association reported on a survey two or three years ago that showed little impact on honey bee from farming. The native bees aren't doing nearly as well. A large portion of my garden is just stuff I don't touch, or where I planted bee friendly plants. There are hundreds of bees living under our side walk, but only the part in front of a single house on the street, mine. The neighbors a obsessed with keeping weed and insects way, so the their part of the side walk is sprayed relentlessly. Funny enough they don't care to shovel snow in the winter.
stinos 6y ago
'The bees are dying so we should all become beekeepers!' Another aspect, similar in origin: 'The bees are dying so we should plant flowers' which then gets misinterpreted and implemented as any flower, native or not, apt for the local population of wild pollinators or not; specifically using the term pollinators here because yet another aspect is some people only think of bees and not everything else. As a result I can buy seeds everywhere of species which a) are not useful for any species except super generalist ones (e.g. honeybees) or b) are sort of native but are grown in other countries and have slight genetic variations resulting in them not being visited by native pollinators because e.g. the pistil is just a bit deeper so pollen is too far to reach. Shops where I can get seeds from local plants which also have been grown locally on the other hand are very rare. But that's theoretically not a problem since proper grassland/meadow management normally automatically results in the plants needed by the native pollinators (this is backed by science, but anecdotal evidence of which I'm still too excited not to share it is that after changing the mowing cycle on land we bought we easily managed to get less grass and more flowers like Campanula on which last month we found a couple of specimens of Andrena Pandellei which is extremely rare here). But in practice we're then back to the original problems of habitat loss, too much fertilizer, ... making the amount of decent meadows and other types of habitats way too rare to be sustainable. tldr; we messed up in the past, and are still doing so, though on the upside I do see changes here and there, also by governments.
- agustif 6y ago
  Open a local seed bank/marketplace then?
  - dejv 6y ago
    Or maybe just stop cutting your lawn so often. With proper management it will get colonized by local species in a few years.
    - nicolaslem 6y ago
      Genuine question: what is proper management?
UncleOxidant 6y ago
Whereas I've been seeing less honeybees over the last several years, my garden this year seems to be teeming with native bumblebees, mason bees and a few others I do not know the identity of. Perhaps a decline in honeybees will actually help native bees to recover?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
njarboe 6y ago
I wrote this little speculative story about honey bees out competing native ones (with an analogy to goat herding) in a HN comment back in Feb, 2019 [1]. Interesting to see some research supporting it. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19207657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19207657

mrweasel 6y ago

Exactly, and don't get me wrong, I do keep honey bees, but they aren't in danger in most countries. The Danish beekeeping association reported on a survey two or three years ago that showed little impact on honey bee from farming. The native bees aren't doing nearly as well. A large portion of my garden is just stuff I don't touch, or where I planted bee friendly plants. There are hundreds of bees living under our side walk, but only the part in front of a single house on the street, mine. The neighbors a obsessed with keeping weed and insects way, so the their part of the side walk is sprayed relentlessly. Funny enough they don't care to shovel snow in the winter.

stinos 6y ago

'The bees are dying so we should all become beekeepers!' Another aspect, similar in origin: 'The bees are dying so we should plant flowers' which then gets misinterpreted and implemented as any flower, native or not, apt for the local population of wild pollinators or not; specifically using the term pollinators here because yet another aspect is some people only think of bees and not everything else. As a result I can buy seeds everywhere of species which a) are not useful for any species except super generalist ones (e.g. honeybees) or b) are sort of native but are grown in other countries and have slight genetic variations resulting in them not being visited by native pollinators because e.g. the pistil is just a bit deeper so pollen is too far to reach. Shops where I can get seeds from local plants which also have been grown locally on the other hand are very rare. But that's theoretically not a problem since proper grassland/meadow management normally automatically results in the plants needed by the native pollinators (this is backed by science, but anecdotal evidence of which I'm still too excited not to share it is that after changing the mowing cycle on land we bought we easily managed to get less grass and more flowers like Campanula on which last month we found a couple of specimens of Andrena Pandellei which is extremely rare here). But in practice we're then back to the original problems of habitat loss, too much fertilizer, ... making the amount of decent meadows and other types of habitats way too rare to be sustainable. tldr; we messed up in the past, and are still doing so, though on the upside I do see changes here and there, also by governments.

agustif 6y ago
Open a local seed bank/marketplace then?
- dejv 6y ago
  Or maybe just stop cutting your lawn so often. With proper management it will get colonized by local species in a few years.
  - nicolaslem 6y ago
    Genuine question: what is proper management?

UncleOxidant 6y ago

Whereas I've been seeing less honeybees over the last several years, my garden this year seems to be teeming with native bumblebees, mason bees and a few others I do not know the identity of. Perhaps a decline in honeybees will actually help native bees to recover?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

njarboe 6y ago

I wrote this little speculative story about honey bees out competing native ones (with an analogy to goat herding) in a HN comment back in Feb, 2019 [1]. Interesting to see some research supporting it. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19207657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19207657