13 ms·

A cocktail of pesticides, parasites and hunger leaves bees down and out

227 points by lnyan 5y ago

gigatexal 5y ago
Well shit now I’m depressed.
malikNF 5y ago
I came across a video[1] where Paul Stamets and Steve Sheppard were experimenting on ways to save bees using mushrooms. Wonder how much effort it would take to implement it worldwide or if its even practical to implement on a world scale. [1]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_lqIUlON1s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_lqIUlON1s (5.38mins)
- filoeleven 5y ago
  This is worth promoting, because lots of folks don’t know about it yet. Beekeepers take note! This video is also MUCH shorter than Stamets’ own talks, so if you want more details a search on “Paul Stamets bees” will get you more statistics. The results appear to be fantastic at preventing colony collapse disorder. And the hypothesis for why it works is just complex enough to make sense in an ecosystem: varroa mites aren’t directly killing bees, but due to pesticide use the bees are more vulnerable to the viruses/infections that the parasitic mites carry. Bees seek out certain fungus mycelium to lick in order to get access to their antiviral and antibacterial properties. Stamets’ solution (literally) is to put a small amount of those harvested chemicals into the sugar water that beekeepers feed their hives. As for practicality, growing mushrooms is very very easy to do at scale for many known species, IIRC this includes most if not all of the species Stamets has found to be beneficial. My only qualm is that it cannot address the threat of extinction to our US native and solitary bee species. So I think it could be a necessary but not sufficient step if keeping native pollinators extant is a goal.
jfjsjcjdjejcosi 5y ago
> Managed high-density bee colonies for crop pollination are associated with these pollinators being at risk of disease and parasite infection I think, unfortunately, when most people hear about bees being at risk, they think only of domestic honey bees (which are not at risk). A lot of the solutions proposed to "save the bees" are therefore counterproductive.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Every few months I briefly entertain the idea of keeping honey bees here at our small farm. And then I start reading through all the start-up material and read about it and quickly become unconvinced of the idea. I would rather support our native pollinating insects. Too many pest problems. Too much labour. And I always come to the conclusion: I'd rather encourage native pollinators for our area. Honey is a neat crop, but not necessary and not something I suspect I could make money from anyways. So yeah, for me it's now becoming: how I can I create more habitat for my native bees and protect them from the cash crop agriculture that's on both sides of me?
  - afandian 5y ago
    Install things resembling 'bee hotels' everywhere you can. Very low cost, potentially might be of great benefit. I was very surprised to see a few solitary bees using the ones that we put in our garden. Then plant a patch of bee-friendly plants, like wildflowers and clover. Also, you don't need to take the honey from a beehive. I don't, I just keep them because I like honeybees. Doesn't reduce all of your upkeep concerns, but does decouple it from needing to achieve an outcome, which can take reduce some mental stress.
    - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
      For sure, right now outside it's bee heaven because I have a lot of cucurbits in flower all over the gardens (uh, anybody want cucumbers and pumpkins? Crap.) And there's a lot of comfrey which has gone crazy all over my farm and the bees seem to really be into that as it pretty consistently flowers over the whole summer. Around this time of year I put buckwheat in as a cover crop, that way it flowers right before frost and then dies back before I plant garlic. When there's a field of buckwheat in flower it's absolutely mental how busy the insects are.
    - whichquestion 5y ago
      The bee hotels we have typically attract non-native mason bees which are later parasitized by parasitoid wasps. It may be better to encourage plants that have pithy stems and leave them over winter (if you are in area with winter) so that bees can use them to nest. Planting wildflowers with genetics native to your region is among the best things you can do to support pollinators.
lettergram 5y ago
I’ve been telling everyone I know. The number 1 concern we should all have are pesticides! The number of insects have dropped dramatically and that has impacts on the entire food chain. Particularly, the ability for plants to reproduce. The pesticides themselves also make it all the way up the food chain. Neonicotinoids have a half life of 5 years and we spray fields EVERY YEAR. So it’s building up in the supply chain. I live surrounded by corn fields and I basically only see wasps, Japanese beetles and some ants. Growing up we saw a ton of different insect species and numbers. Finally, all these chemicals interact and frankly we have no idea of the long term impacts when combined.
- gizmondo 5y ago
  > Neonicotinoids have a half life of 5 years and we spray fields EVERY YEAR. So it’s building up in the supply chain. Have they been in use less than 10 years? Or are we increasing the usage every year? Otherwise your conclusion doesn't seem to follow.
  - at_a_remove 5y ago
    Okay, so with a half-life of five years, whatever you spray at year zero, you get about 87.0551% left by next year. So, let's imagine we spray just one unit per year. Year zero, one unit. Farmer Brown shows up to do his usual one-unit blast, recommended by Monsanto, but 87% of the stuff is still there. Year two, 1.870551 units are present. Year three, 2.628408673 units. Year four, 3.288162485. By year ten, you have 5.79376654 units present. If the half-life is really five years, you should do an initial one-unit dump, then just thirteen percent of that every subsequent year.
    - RandallBrown 5y ago
      Presumably most of the pesticides get removed when the plants are harvested. Some probably are still around, but if spraying less worked, the farmers would because it would be cheaper. Not saying that pesticides aren't a problem, just saying that we're probably not just flooding our fields with more and more pesticides.
johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
I was at an exhibition in Toronto, Ontario over 10 years ago and almost jumped out of my skin when I heard a beekeeper casually exclaim that "wild bees don't exist in Ontario any more". I pressed her on it and she said that sure some do still exist but hardly enough to really do any pollinating of much of anything. I used to see honeybees all the time growing up. Been bit by plenty. Now I am hard pressed to find a single one if I look.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Honeybees are never really "wild" in Ontario. They're a European / Asian species. I don't think they naturalize well here, nor should they, they're invasive if they do. I am sure there's the odd wild colony here and there, but I doubt they last long. That said, there's honeybees all over my farm right now (Hamilton area) going crazy on my cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins and zucchinis. And they're not mine, I don't keep them, and I don't know of any neighbours here who do. Earlier in the year it was bumblebees (oh they're so cute!) but right now just lots and lots of honeybees.
  - johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
    Well that's a relief! Maybe I've just spent too long in the city!
    - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
      I remember seeing a segment by David Suzuki I think about how bee populations are actually healthier in some respects inside urban areas than they are in many rural areas, due to the spread of large scale monocrop cash crop agriculture. Backyards in urban areas combined with parks are in some ways more diverse than a lot of the midwest/great lakes cash cropped region at this point :-(
      - hinkley 5y ago
        I’ve lived in to “garden districts” and I always shut my trap when population collapses are discussed because in my area everything goes great. I let an area go fallow last year and I’m still trying to identify some of the insects I saw. Lots of parasitoid wasps. This year it’s smaller and the weather is drier and hotter so the flowers I believe are little late. Also because it’s hot I’m and there’s more things to look at and do, I’m spending less time observing. It does still feel like this might be a worse year than last, but in this area at least I know there’s a reservoir of diversity than can still be cultivated.
sltkr 5y ago
Interestingly, Quillette published an article last week, suggesting that the concerns about the insect crisis are overblown: https://quillette.com/2021/07/25/the-insect-apocalypse-that-never-was/ https://quillette.com/2021/07/25/the-insect-apocalypse-that-... They cite many decent sources that seem to corroborate this, though none as respectable as Nature. What's interesting about the Nature news article is that it very carefully avoids making any definite claims of what is going to happen if things stay the same. The author points out that pollinators are important to the ecosystem (true, of course) and that they're "under threat", which seems intended to imply that the stability of the ecosystem itself is under threat. But no explicit claims about the impact of on the ecosystem at large are actually made in the article. As a layman, I'm not sure what to make of this. At this stage, it seems like these studies are mostly of interest to researchers, and there is no real need for the general public to worry about "A World Without Bees", yet that's probably going to be the popular interpretation anyway.
- greyivy 5y ago
  The Quillette itself has quite the reputation of being an untrustworthy source. The article may be well cited, but I'd caution anyone reading this to think critically and do your own research (on the topic and The Quillette).
  - bjt 5y ago
    The Media Bias Chart puts Quillette at about the same level of reliability as FiveThirtyEight. A bit higher than CNN. A bit lower than The Atlantic. https://www.adfontesmedia.com/ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
      "A bit higher than CNN" is the lowest bar that I've ever heard of. You'd have to be an ant to limbo under that.
  - sltkr 5y ago
    How did you determine that Quillette is an untrustworthy source? If you want to convince people, you have to give arguments, not just make statements of facts without anything to back them up. Personally I don't consider Quillette a source of unbiased truth. Articles are typically written by a single author that has biases of their own, and the quality of argumentation and reputability of references cited varies greatly. Despite that, I feel like it's useful to read about counterpoints to popular narratives. This helps separate out the beliefs that people agree on and the ones that are in dispute. For example, on the topic of insect extinction, it seems like both sides agree that: - Habitat destruction reduces the prevalence of pollinators in human maintained land. - No species of bee is at risk of going extinct. It's telling that my comment was downvoted without any comment explaining what was wrong or bad about it. That confirms to me that people want to believe certain narratives in spite of available evidence, and it shows why alternative media like Quillette are absolutely crucial to allow unbiased people to inform themselves on both sides of the issues before forming a conclusion.
neonihil 5y ago
I love how society is ignoring the bluntness of the situation. If bees go down, we go down. Simple as such. All of our food supply depends on flowering plants. Without the workforce to distribute pollen, no seeds will grow. Without seeds, no new plants will grow. Without new plants, we have nothing to eat. Nor does our meat stock. If I was to go dark, I’d say every problem contains it’s own soliton…
- pfdietz 5y ago
  > If bees go down, we go down. The great majority of crops are wind pollinated, not insect pollinated. So this is not entirely clear.
  - neonihil 5y ago
    You have a point. There are wind pollinated plants. It is not entirely clear though how effective the pollination would be for those plants without bees. But these crops do require bees. Coffee is one of them! Just saying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated...
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      Why should bees have anything to do with wind pollinated plants? The plants are not optimized for attracting insects or depositing pollen on them. So, no, I don't think these plants require bees. Coffee has actual insect-attracting flowers and is clearly insect pollinated, unlike the major staple crops. From your link: "Most staple food grains, like corn, wheat, rice, soybean and sorghum, need no insect help at all; they are wind or self-pollinated."
- bserge 5y ago
  Yeah that was a big thing a decade or so ago. Then it switched to global warming, then climate change. Old news don't make money, and that's what's important.
blackgirldev 5y ago
I am amazed at the imagery of humans as invasive destroyers of the earth. There is nothing more depressing than the knowledge of our killing everything in a literal war against other species with bees as collateral damage.
WalterBright 5y ago
I've never used pesticides or herbicides on my lawn for 20 years. When the flowers are out, there's a constant hum of bees. The bees never bother me, and I avoid bothering them. I had to get rid of a hornet's nest, though. They'd come after me like Me109s when I'd just walk by.

227 points by lnyan 5y ago

Well shit now I’m depressed.

I came across a video[1] where Paul Stamets and Steve Sheppard were experimenting on ways to save bees using mushrooms. Wonder how much effort it would take to implement it worldwide or if its even practical to implement on a world scale. [1]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_lqIUlON1s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_lqIUlON1s (5.38mins)

filoeleven 5y ago
This is worth promoting, because lots of folks don’t know about it yet. Beekeepers take note! This video is also MUCH shorter than Stamets’ own talks, so if you want more details a search on “Paul Stamets bees” will get you more statistics. The results appear to be fantastic at preventing colony collapse disorder. And the hypothesis for why it works is just complex enough to make sense in an ecosystem: varroa mites aren’t directly killing bees, but due to pesticide use the bees are more vulnerable to the viruses/infections that the parasitic mites carry. Bees seek out certain fungus mycelium to lick in order to get access to their antiviral and antibacterial properties. Stamets’ solution (literally) is to put a small amount of those harvested chemicals into the sugar water that beekeepers feed their hives. As for practicality, growing mushrooms is very very easy to do at scale for many known species, IIRC this includes most if not all of the species Stamets has found to be beneficial. My only qualm is that it cannot address the threat of extinction to our US native and solitary bee species. So I think it could be a necessary but not sufficient step if keeping native pollinators extant is a goal.

jfjsjcjdjejcosi 5y ago

> Managed high-density bee colonies for crop pollination are associated with these pollinators being at risk of disease and parasite infection I think, unfortunately, when most people hear about bees being at risk, they think only of domestic honey bees (which are not at risk). A lot of the solutions proposed to "save the bees" are therefore counterproductive.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Every few months I briefly entertain the idea of keeping honey bees here at our small farm. And then I start reading through all the start-up material and read about it and quickly become unconvinced of the idea. I would rather support our native pollinating insects. Too many pest problems. Too much labour. And I always come to the conclusion: I'd rather encourage native pollinators for our area. Honey is a neat crop, but not necessary and not something I suspect I could make money from anyways. So yeah, for me it's now becoming: how I can I create more habitat for my native bees and protect them from the cash crop agriculture that's on both sides of me?
- afandian 5y ago
  Install things resembling 'bee hotels' everywhere you can. Very low cost, potentially might be of great benefit. I was very surprised to see a few solitary bees using the ones that we put in our garden. Then plant a patch of bee-friendly plants, like wildflowers and clover. Also, you don't need to take the honey from a beehive. I don't, I just keep them because I like honeybees. Doesn't reduce all of your upkeep concerns, but does decouple it from needing to achieve an outcome, which can take reduce some mental stress.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    For sure, right now outside it's bee heaven because I have a lot of cucurbits in flower all over the gardens (uh, anybody want cucumbers and pumpkins? Crap.) And there's a lot of comfrey which has gone crazy all over my farm and the bees seem to really be into that as it pretty consistently flowers over the whole summer. Around this time of year I put buckwheat in as a cover crop, that way it flowers right before frost and then dies back before I plant garlic. When there's a field of buckwheat in flower it's absolutely mental how busy the insects are.
  - whichquestion 5y ago
    The bee hotels we have typically attract non-native mason bees which are later parasitized by parasitoid wasps. It may be better to encourage plants that have pithy stems and leave them over winter (if you are in area with winter) so that bees can use them to nest. Planting wildflowers with genetics native to your region is among the best things you can do to support pollinators.

lettergram 5y ago

I’ve been telling everyone I know. The number 1 concern we should all have are pesticides! The number of insects have dropped dramatically and that has impacts on the entire food chain. Particularly, the ability for plants to reproduce. The pesticides themselves also make it all the way up the food chain. Neonicotinoids have a half life of 5 years and we spray fields EVERY YEAR. So it’s building up in the supply chain. I live surrounded by corn fields and I basically only see wasps, Japanese beetles and some ants. Growing up we saw a ton of different insect species and numbers. Finally, all these chemicals interact and frankly we have no idea of the long term impacts when combined.

gizmondo 5y ago
> Neonicotinoids have a half life of 5 years and we spray fields EVERY YEAR. So it’s building up in the supply chain. Have they been in use less than 10 years? Or are we increasing the usage every year? Otherwise your conclusion doesn't seem to follow.
- at_a_remove 5y ago
  Okay, so with a half-life of five years, whatever you spray at year zero, you get about 87.0551% left by next year. So, let's imagine we spray just one unit per year. Year zero, one unit. Farmer Brown shows up to do his usual one-unit blast, recommended by Monsanto, but 87% of the stuff is still there. Year two, 1.870551 units are present. Year three, 2.628408673 units. Year four, 3.288162485. By year ten, you have 5.79376654 units present. If the half-life is really five years, you should do an initial one-unit dump, then just thirteen percent of that every subsequent year.
  - RandallBrown 5y ago
    Presumably most of the pesticides get removed when the plants are harvested. Some probably are still around, but if spraying less worked, the farmers would because it would be cheaper. Not saying that pesticides aren't a problem, just saying that we're probably not just flooding our fields with more and more pesticides.

johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago

I was at an exhibition in Toronto, Ontario over 10 years ago and almost jumped out of my skin when I heard a beekeeper casually exclaim that "wild bees don't exist in Ontario any more". I pressed her on it and she said that sure some do still exist but hardly enough to really do any pollinating of much of anything. I used to see honeybees all the time growing up. Been bit by plenty. Now I am hard pressed to find a single one if I look.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Honeybees are never really "wild" in Ontario. They're a European / Asian species. I don't think they naturalize well here, nor should they, they're invasive if they do. I am sure there's the odd wild colony here and there, but I doubt they last long. That said, there's honeybees all over my farm right now (Hamilton area) going crazy on my cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins and zucchinis. And they're not mine, I don't keep them, and I don't know of any neighbours here who do. Earlier in the year it was bumblebees (oh they're so cute!) but right now just lots and lots of honeybees.
- johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
  Well that's a relief! Maybe I've just spent too long in the city!
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    I remember seeing a segment by David Suzuki I think about how bee populations are actually healthier in some respects inside urban areas than they are in many rural areas, due to the spread of large scale monocrop cash crop agriculture. Backyards in urban areas combined with parks are in some ways more diverse than a lot of the midwest/great lakes cash cropped region at this point :-(
    - hinkley 5y ago
      I’ve lived in to “garden districts” and I always shut my trap when population collapses are discussed because in my area everything goes great. I let an area go fallow last year and I’m still trying to identify some of the insects I saw. Lots of parasitoid wasps. This year it’s smaller and the weather is drier and hotter so the flowers I believe are little late. Also because it’s hot I’m and there’s more things to look at and do, I’m spending less time observing. It does still feel like this might be a worse year than last, but in this area at least I know there’s a reservoir of diversity than can still be cultivated.

sltkr 5y ago

Interestingly, Quillette published an article last week, suggesting that the concerns about the insect crisis are overblown: https://quillette.com/2021/07/25/the-insect-apocalypse-that-never-was/ https://quillette.com/2021/07/25/the-insect-apocalypse-that-... They cite many decent sources that seem to corroborate this, though none as respectable as Nature. What's interesting about the Nature news article is that it very carefully avoids making any definite claims of what is going to happen if things stay the same. The author points out that pollinators are important to the ecosystem (true, of course) and that they're "under threat", which seems intended to imply that the stability of the ecosystem itself is under threat. But no explicit claims about the impact of on the ecosystem at large are actually made in the article. As a layman, I'm not sure what to make of this. At this stage, it seems like these studies are mostly of interest to researchers, and there is no real need for the general public to worry about "A World Without Bees", yet that's probably going to be the popular interpretation anyway.

greyivy 5y ago
The Quillette itself has quite the reputation of being an untrustworthy source. The article may be well cited, but I'd caution anyone reading this to think critically and do your own research (on the topic and The Quillette).
- bjt 5y ago
  The Media Bias Chart puts Quillette at about the same level of reliability as FiveThirtyEight. A bit higher than CNN. A bit lower than The Atlantic. https://www.adfontesmedia.com/ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    "A bit higher than CNN" is the lowest bar that I've ever heard of. You'd have to be an ant to limbo under that.
- sltkr 5y ago
  How did you determine that Quillette is an untrustworthy source? If you want to convince people, you have to give arguments, not just make statements of facts without anything to back them up. Personally I don't consider Quillette a source of unbiased truth. Articles are typically written by a single author that has biases of their own, and the quality of argumentation and reputability of references cited varies greatly. Despite that, I feel like it's useful to read about counterpoints to popular narratives. This helps separate out the beliefs that people agree on and the ones that are in dispute. For example, on the topic of insect extinction, it seems like both sides agree that: - Habitat destruction reduces the prevalence of pollinators in human maintained land. - No species of bee is at risk of going extinct. It's telling that my comment was downvoted without any comment explaining what was wrong or bad about it. That confirms to me that people want to believe certain narratives in spite of available evidence, and it shows why alternative media like Quillette are absolutely crucial to allow unbiased people to inform themselves on both sides of the issues before forming a conclusion.

neonihil 5y ago

I love how society is ignoring the bluntness of the situation. If bees go down, we go down. Simple as such. All of our food supply depends on flowering plants. Without the workforce to distribute pollen, no seeds will grow. Without seeds, no new plants will grow. Without new plants, we have nothing to eat. Nor does our meat stock. If I was to go dark, I’d say every problem contains it’s own soliton…

pfdietz 5y ago
> If bees go down, we go down. The great majority of crops are wind pollinated, not insect pollinated. So this is not entirely clear.
- neonihil 5y ago
  You have a point. There are wind pollinated plants. It is not entirely clear though how effective the pollination would be for those plants without bees. But these crops do require bees. Coffee is one of them! Just saying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated...
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Why should bees have anything to do with wind pollinated plants? The plants are not optimized for attracting insects or depositing pollen on them. So, no, I don't think these plants require bees. Coffee has actual insect-attracting flowers and is clearly insect pollinated, unlike the major staple crops. From your link: "Most staple food grains, like corn, wheat, rice, soybean and sorghum, need no insect help at all; they are wind or self-pollinated."
bserge 5y ago
Yeah that was a big thing a decade or so ago. Then it switched to global warming, then climate change. Old news don't make money, and that's what's important.

blackgirldev 5y ago

I am amazed at the imagery of humans as invasive destroyers of the earth. There is nothing more depressing than the knowledge of our killing everything in a literal war against other species with bees as collateral damage.

WalterBright 5y ago

I've never used pesticides or herbicides on my lawn for 20 years. When the flowers are out, there's a constant hum of bees. The bees never bother me, and I avoid bothering them. I had to get rid of a hornet's nest, though. They'd come after me like Me109s when I'd just walk by.