16 ms·

Whatever happened to the bee apocalypse?

318 points by nsoonhui 4y ago

user3939382 4y ago
I planted these, as my wife and I call them, "bee seeds" https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08P2GMM6L https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08P2GMM6L
jb1991 4y ago
I thought this was going to be about the impending doom of the Mexican killer bees we were all warned about in the 80s but that never came. It was in the news for months about a cloud of killer bees.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  One problem with the news is that every issue of concern gets blown way out of proportion in the news until it sounds like some kind of existential disaster, and then when total disaster does not come, people think the issue wasn't nonsense. But in reality many of these things are a real problem, just not quite at the scale the news has made it out to be. But what I see time and time again is people dismissing issues of concern because of how the media treated the issue, when what we should really be doing is trying to read through the media's sensationalism to the underlying facts. But I don't think enough people have really internalized how much of the media is sensationalism and lies. People know it when you ask them, but then they go on and believe it all anyway.
- artmageddon 4y ago
  I thought they were the Africanized ones? Those were the ones I read about as a kid in my school library, and the way they depicted their projected spread across the USA made it look like a pestilence worthy of Revelation. I honestly thought I wasn't going to live to become an adult because we'd all be over taken by super aggressive bees.
  - jb1991 4y ago
    They were supposedly spreading north from Mexico if I remember. To kill us all indeed.
    - jb1991 4y ago
      Just found these: https://groovyhistory.com/killer-bees-1970s https://groovyhistory.com/killer-bees-1970s https://blue-succubus.livejournal.com/83977.html https://blue-succubus.livejournal.com/83977.html?
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Tangentially related, I wonder if anyone has done a meta-analysis about media reported calamities, like Zika, the bee population dying off, etc., and doing a follow up. Then comparing it to what the media reported initially. Was this accurate, blown out of proportion, understated, or simply sensational reporting?
- lkbm 4y ago
  SSC did a blog post about the various environmental panics of the 1990s. Some were real, some weren't; some were solved, some weren't[0]. [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-environmentalism/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e...
  - lisper 4y ago
    These historical successes are encouraging, but it is very important not to extrapolate any of them to anthropogenic climate change. The processes underlying every single one of the examples in the SSC article operate on time scales of years or decades. CO2 causes effects over centuries and persists for millennia. It is a completely different beast.
    - whatshisface 4y ago
      The atmospheric chemistry one was Ozone which turned out to be real, and was solved through regulation.
      - lisper 4y ago
        Yes, but you've missed the point: the problem with ozone was depletion in the upper atmosphere by CFCs. But CFCs do not persist for millennia and ozone is continually produced by natural processes. So if you stop emitting CFCs the problem naturally fixes itself in a short period of time (a few decades). But even if we reduced CO2 emissions to zero tomorrow that would not solve the problem because we are already at 150% of pre-industrial CO2, and CO2 persists for thousands of years. We've taken carbon that was sequestered by natural processes over a period of hundreds of millions of years and released it back into the atmosphere in a period of a few hundred years. That genie will not go quietly or quickly back into its bottle.
40four 4y ago
Great article! One of the first I’ve ever seen that breaks down the complexities of the bee problem in a thoughtful, reasonable way. The slew of articles we’ve seen is the last 5-10 years about the ‘Bee Apocalypse’ were largely either highly misleading, poorly researched, or just plain biased by one agenda or another. It used to make me really angry. I’m sure I could dig up past rants I’ve made about it here on HN. Very nice to finally see a detailed objective explanation of the situation.
- MrYellowP 4y ago
  > or just plain biased by one agenda or another. When it reaches mainstream news, there's always an agenda.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - synu 4y ago
    So just insinuations and “do your own research?” I’m intrigued as to who the nefarious entity is with their shadowy plan to protect pollinators that the media is conspiring to hide.
    - MrYellowP 4y ago
      Can you just not parrot the same thoughtless nonsense as most people do? It's not intelligent behaviour. Instead it's completely dismissing something absolutely possible, proven by actual history, unless you wish to believe that no state ever controlled the mass media, ever. Fact of the matter is that in Austria this has been happening for the last two years in such an obvious fashion that it's scary. The former-former chancellor raised what's colloquially called the "propaganda budget" by ten times to 200 Million+. Do you think they do that for no reason? Nowadays all the mass media (the publications with the widest reach, if you prefer), here in Austria write and show solely what the governments wants. There is no dissenting thought to read whatsoever. Not a single critical thing. During the two covid years they also completely blocked out every news from outside regarding it. What went on with that, and still does, is absolutely insane and corrupt to the core. Did you know that Austria, while everyone else already moved on, still mandated lockdowns and masks? Did you know that, in vienna, masks were still mandatory until a week (two?) ago? Did you know that there's a huge scandal looming around this, because it appears that people in the government know people in companies which coincidentially sell masks? Did you know that Austria and Germany were the only countries mandating FFP2 masks specifically and people here had no idea about this? There was one news outlet which brought a big article about the "corona experts" of the government. It turns out they were all paid by pfizer. Would you call that independent and unbiased? Did you know that Reporters without borders lowered our "press freedom index", because it noticable got worse? There's another group, I forgot the name. They asses the "democracy level" of a nation. We've got put down from "liberal democracy" to "electoral democracy". You have no idea of the shit that happened here in the last two years. Zero. None. You have no idea what can happen to you and where you live. Anyone believing that Hitler can't happen again ... ... will help making sure Hitler will happen again. Did you know that the mass media outlets in the USA are only controlled by a few rich people who own a shitton of daughter companies people believe to be local media? Rich people, who belong to the social circle of rich people, who, as you most likely know, have strong influence in the government. What about the soviet union? Are you claiming they had independent press? Do you believe that, when there's an entity which continuously orders lots of advertising space in a medium, it does not gain control? I wash your back, you wash mine? Are you really that naive? Do you truly believe the media tells you the truth and not what they want you to hear? Then why would sensationalism be a thing? Dude. When you respond, first think for yourself. If all you can do is writing oneliners without any actual points in it, then you're not fit for a discussion. It makes you come across as someone who's going to REEEE at me eventually. Let's try again? (PS: oh and ... you can look all this up. It's all verifyable. DYOR or stop believing you're smarter than others, because you might not be.)
photochemsyn 4y ago
(1) Stop using neonicotinoid pesticides. There are plenty of alternatives for protecting food crops from insect infestations, such as neem oil applied as a foliar spray or a soil soak in response to infestations. Neonictoninoides are based on the tobacco nicotine molecule structure, but are typically chlorinated and modified to make them more persistent and toxic to insects relative to animals. There's a good argument for banning the entire class due to their persistent ecological effects on beneficial native insect populations. https://organic-center.org/research/neonicotinoid-pesticides-have-long-term-effects-wild-bee-populations https://organic-center.org/research/neonicotinoid-pesticides... (2) Have undisturbed habitat set aside for wild bee populations. This can be something as simple as maintaining undisturbed hedgerows on the sides of agricultural fields, but in general means maintaining a fair amount of undisturbed native habitat. https://www.planetbee.org/planet-bee-blog//native-bee-series-intro-to-native-bees https://www.planetbee.org/planet-bee-blog//native-bee-series...
- 42e6e8c8-f7b8-4 4y ago
  Demonization of neonics is misplaced. You can spray at night when bees aren't active. You can spray when your plants aren't in bloom and attracting bees. Oh well, the 2 minutes hate have emerged against neonics and farmers pivot like they ways do.
  - jamal-kumar 4y ago
    If we're talking about trying to stem the destruction of wild species here (The problem really isn't about domesticated honeybees), then you should definitely consider the fact that spraying at night won't help those wild bees which are nocturnal [1], nor does your point of view on these address the fact that these pesticides have a degree of environmental persistence. [2] This isn't demonization, it's just straight facts when there's plenty of alternatives out there which aren't feeding the giant agri-industrial complex behemoth. [1] https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/do-bees-fly-at-night.html https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/do-bees-fly-at-night.html [2] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b06388 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b06388
ck2 4y ago
Horizontal well fracking was perfected/took-off in 2006 https://ballotpedia.org/File:EIA_fracked_wells_2015.png https://ballotpedia.org/File:EIA_fracked_wells_2015.png Wells are burnt off for months, the more wells the more burnoff. People get sick up to 60 miles away from the burnoff, I wonder how that affects wildlife.
- erulabs 4y ago
  If fracking was related, we'd see a dramatically higher die-off around the permian basin and more or less no die-off whatsoever in the north-west and north-east. This isn't quite what we see: https://fractracker.org https://fractracker.org and https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-map-highlights-bee-population-declines-across-us-180962268/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-map-highlights... Now, as for fracking and air pollution, I am not an expert, but I did have a very interesting set of discussions with a fracking engineer who made a good argument that fracking shale in particular has dramatically decreased air pollution from oil extraction. Here is an article about it https://www.energyindepth.org/report-data-indicate-that-massive-improvements-in-air-quality-health-a-direct-function-of-shale/ https://www.energyindepth.org/report-data-indicate-that-mass... (should be noted that this website is run by the oil industry, so take this line of argument with some salt).
  - jamal-kumar 4y ago
    Thanks for the information. What about water table pollution? Those videos of people's tap water lighting on fire certainly stuck with me [1] [1] https://youtu.be/1zagvo75RJo https://youtu.be/1zagvo75RJo
    - ck2 4y ago
      The water is the least of your problems with fracking. It costs a lot but you can import your water. You cannot however import your air. https://news.wsu.edu/press-release/2022/03/08/natural-gas-flares-likely-source-of-respiratory-illness-spike/ https://news.wsu.edu/press-release/2022/03/08/natural-gas-fl...
kibwen 4y ago
This article buries its lede, which is about how honey bees get all the attention but are at less risk than wild bees: > And that brings us to the actual problem. The honey bee (Apis mellifera) is only one of about 20 thousand different bee species. The non-honey bees are usually referred to as wild bees, and each location has its native species. According to an estimate from researchers at Cornell University in 2006, wild bees contribute to the pollination of 85 percent of crops in agriculture." > [...] > But last year the magazine Cell published the results of a study with a global estimate for the situation of wild bees. The authors looked at the numbers of bee species that were collected or observed over time using data publicly available at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. They found that even though the number of records has been increasing, the number of different species in the records has been sharply decreasing in the past decades. > The decline rates differ between the continents, but the species numbers are dropping steeply everywhere except for Oceania. The researchers say there’s a number of factors in play here, such as the expansion of monocultures, loss of native habitat, pesticides, climate change, and bee trade that also trades around pathogens. > So the problems that wild bees face are similar to those of honey bees, but they have an additional problem which is… honeybees. Honey bees compete with wild bees for food and habitat and they also pass on viruses. Now, a big honey bee colony can deal with viruses by throwing out the infected bees. But this doesn’t work for wild bees because they don’t live in large colonies. And worse, when honey bees and wild bees fight for food they seem to both lose out.
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  I think the colloquial term for (edit; the most commonly well-known) many wild bees in English is "bumblebees". They're often burrowing species that don't have honey producing hives (They do stuff like make little caves in moss, dirt, and underbrush), and are often crucial pollinators of certain species of plants which are specifically attractive to certain wild bees (Orchids are a good example here) but which domesticated honeybees might not even touch. I was once dreaming how cool it would be to get into beekeeping but after realizing it might be at a greater detriment to wild species in my area those dreams have become somewhat faded.
  - 4y ago
BurningFrog 4y ago
People will always click on apocalypse stories, so the market will keep supplying them.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  If there's one bubble that should burst it's the media. There's too much noise nowadays. And yeah it taps onto lazy human reflexes.
- throwaway5752 4y ago
  You didn't read the article, did you? The author did not diminish CCD. Let me spoil it for you, this is the summary "It’s really just a matter of time until there’ll be too few bees to pollinate some of the flowers or too few insects to support some of the birds, or too few birds to spread seeds and so on. And we may be able to fix a few of these problems with technology, but not all of them. So, while it is important to talk to your kids about the birds and the bees, it really is important to talk to your kids about the birds and the bees. We simply don’t know what’s going to happen in response to what we do, and I’m afraid we’re not paying attention which is why I’m standing here recording this video. Because if we don’t pay attention, one day we’ll be surprised to be remembered that in the end we, too, are just part of the ecosystem." Our situation is still really bad and we don't even know the extent of how bad it is. Everyone just reflexively has to believe it's not really the end of the world as we've known it for most of human history, and that we can't really be bringing about an extinction cycle that will end a significant percentage of species. We are, though, every scientist in the field knows it. We are inducing a hot earth out of the planetary cycle because of carbon dioxide at the same time we're weakening ecosystem. It's going to end badly, and instinctively we all know it.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Succint and accurate. Massive rebound of the coral growth? No one wants to report that: https://twitter.com/alexepstein/status/1440696877079433220 https://twitter.com/alexepstein/status/1440696877079433220
  - throwaway5752 4y ago
peteradio 4y ago
> However, the numbers may sound more alarming than they really are because honey bees are efficiently bred and managed by humans. Could that be part of the problem, they mention diversity loss in habitat, how about diversity of honeybee genetics. At the same time, HoneyBees are basically barnyard animals, we don't monitor the collapse of pig populations as they head to the slaughterhouse. I understand its not quite an apt analogy because that is the known causative agent and nobody is trying to slaughter their HoneyBees. All the same, they are not natural, I wonder if the public realizes that.
- solardev 4y ago
  Honeybees are basically an invasive species that humans brought to the Americas in order to pollinate old-world crops (and also harvest honey). The thing is, we've replaced a lot of native new-world ecosystems and foods with old-world crops that depend on old-world bees. There are a few separate problems that the media often mixes up: One is that our old-world crops aren't getting enough old-world bees to meet their pollination needs. Separately, new-world bees (what the article calls "wild bees") are also being replaced by old-world bees, losing out in competition, and not being cared for by professional beekeepers. They're more vulnerable, less protected, and less monitored. To top it all off, many kinds of bees, old-world or new, are also suffering from the cumulative (and unfortunately complex) domino effects of habitat loss, pesticides, climate change, etc. I think what's happening in the media is that journalists, knowingly or not, are using #2 and #3 to amplify the concern of #1 even though they're not always aligned (e.g., old-world bees are often one of the reasons contributing to the decline of native new-world bees). It's relatively harder to get the public to care about an industrial economics problem (#1, where farmers have to resort to expensive human manual pollination instead of cheap bees), so trying to sell that as environmental crisis a la Silent Spring gets more eyeballs.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    To which old-world crops do you refer?
    - 4y ago
vr46 4y ago
It probably helps that millions of people are helping insect and bird populations by planting stacks of wildflowers, doing No Mow May, and being a bit nicer to local wildlife which all adds up.
- bmitc 4y ago
  Just as a note, it is important that people plant native wildflowers and not just any wildflowers.
- hinkley 4y ago
  If you're trying to help bumble bees, they tend to like to build their nests in the ground under/around rocks, or occasionally in dense duff like straw bales/wattles. Last year I had a plant to move a flat stone behind a masonry retaining wall on my property to be a hat on a low stone wall that extended off of the end of it, hoping to create some bee habitat. The rock turned out to be too heavy to move, and as soon as I started jostling it, bumble bees came out from under it to see what the ruckus was. So apparently that rock was working just fine where it was. Instead I bought some new stone, but I haven't observed any bees so far this year. Some people use old pots for this task, but I know people, and an upturned pot is going to be inspected, potentially destroying the hive. Kids in particular would be both more prone to this, and more traumatized to learn what they'd done. A big ol' rock is less of an attractive hazard.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    I unwittingly disturbed a solo bumblebee who made his winter home in my compost pile. I wasn't quite sure what I came across, I'd unearthed a wildly vibrating ball of fine fluff, once I teased it apart out flew a big ol' bumblebee. I've got dozens of bumblebees around my yard this part of the summer as our comfrey goes to flower. I believe they winter among my raspberries where its basically an undisturbed hugelkultur mound. Besides bumblebees and carpenter bees I'm pretty much unaware if I'm looking at a wild bee or some type of fly. There are at least a dozen probably closer to two dozen different bee/fly species on the raspberries alone this time of year. I also see honeybees but they stick to the clover, I will see more of them when sunflowers and stonecrop flower. I feel very fortunate to see that kind of variety, we even get monarch butterflies enough to cause the branches to move under their collective weight, I wasn't aware that happened outside of Mexico.
akrod1 4y ago
Honeybees are dying en masse from diseases. Yet they are being neglected by the animal health industry. We need safe and sustainable solutions to help protect the world's honeybees. Dalan Animal health is developing the worlds first honeybee vaccine. To learn more go to: https://www.dalan.com/ https://www.dalan.com/
rob_c 4y ago
Simply put. Please America stop using more and more artificial modern chemicals in your farming and go back to tried and tested agricultural methods. Your soil is getting destroyed through mega tractors. Your buying everything glaxo can sell and your harming your own wasteland that for some reason you grow copious amounts of corn on. The problem is still there and making an article suggesting that it's not for a (surprise twist...), "the problem is worst than you think" ending, is just turning a topic into a discussion that should be settled fact.
- jl6 4y ago
  Artificial modern chemicals increase yield, which reduces food price. Yes, we should use less of those chemicals. Yes, that will hit the poorest hardest. Is this problem solvable? Maybe. But let’s not pretend it’s simple.
  - toss1 4y ago
    it will really hit the poor hard when the soil depletion reduces yield permanently -and the phosphate supply is already coming to the end and costs increasing
  - rob_c 4y ago
    Please stop defending the failing quo with "but what can we do about manbearpig...". One of the first solutions is stop growing corn badly in the wrong place and grow more appropriate crops elsewhere. I never claimed it was easy I claim that it's obvious.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  > go back to tried and tested agricultural methods https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/images/US_Corn_Yld_Trend.png https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/images/US... "Tried and tested" agricultural methods produced about 20 bushels of corn per acre. Current "artificial modern chemicals" methods produce about 160. Eight times as much. > your harming your own wasteland that for some reason you grow copious amounts of corn on The reason is that it feeds a substantial portion of the planet.
excalibur 4y ago
> Whatever happened to the Bee Apocalypse? The same thing that happened to the regular apocalypse. It's still moving closer every day, it's just taking longer than anticipated and causing some to lose patience.
- epgui 4y ago
  These things tend to happen slowly and then very, very quickly.
cainxinth 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations > “Some of the insects most affected include bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, dragonflies and damselflies.” Great. It’s gonna be nothing but roaches, mosquitos, and ants eventually.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Don't forget house flies.
- tintedfireglass 4y ago
  Mosquitoes are actually an important pollinators for many species. Mosquitoes aren't parasites they need blood only during their reproduction cycle
BirAdam 4y ago
What happened is that the apocalypse did happen, is still happening, and will continue to happen until such time as people quit using tons of pesticides. Worse is that warmer air usually means more oxygen is available which should make insect and arachnid populations explode, and should result in physically larger insects and arachnids. That we do not see this speaks to the health of these populations.
- goatlover 4y ago
  So an apocalypse can happen for an indefinite period of time? I'm calling BS on the use of that term. A decline in some insect populations is not an "apocalypse". An apocalypse would be a massive extinction level event on a global scale, like when a giant rock slams into the Earth, or there's continuous volcanic activity for a million years.
tcmart14 4y ago
Still happening, it’s just now maintaining bee colonies and taking them on the road to pollinate is now an industry.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  there is a single man who was/is credited with starting this so-called industry -- it was on the cover of a New York Times sunday supplement, long ago.. not everyone was thrilled by this, as you can imagine. When big trucked-bee death event happened contemporaneously with documented colony collapse, I bet that he had his name scrubbed from more than one website.
hammock 4y ago
The bee apocalypse is still here. The bees haven’t come back. Other fauna have declined as well, without us noticing. I go to northern Maine a few times a year and I’m always looking for moose. I used to be able to find them. Now I only see them when I’m in the air (from a plane). My friend showed me a study the state did tracking 60 newborn moose calves. Due to overwhelming winter tick population, 90%(!) did not survive the first year, and therefore could not reproduce. This problem has led to a massive decline of moose.
- mulmen 4y ago
  Do you have a link to the study? I’m curious how that survival rate compares to the past.
  - scruple 4y ago
    I found an article about it because I was also curious. https://www.mainepublic.org/environment-and-outdoors/2022-05-18/most-moose-calves-in-part-of-maine-died-this-year-as-a-tiny-predator-benefits-from-warmer-weather https://www.mainepublic.org/environment-and-outdoors/2022-05...
tehchromic 4y ago
Humans are wiping out the planetary biome as predicted
- tacocataco 4y ago
  Do you think industrialization led to atrophy of our ability to adapt to our environments? (The reason we're apex predator) Or maybe modern civilization requires more long term planning then our brains are wired for?
zahma 4y ago
I appreciate that she draws the link between monoculture crops, land use, and the health of ecosystems upon which agriculture depends. Organics are important not because GMOs are the enemy but rather because the land use change is inherently bad for all life in that area. GMOs don't have to lead to monoculture crops that span acres or rampant neonicotinoid insecticides, but they often do, and it's precisely at that point we can see drastic changes in a biome's stability and therefore the health of bees among many other pollinators. That's why we need to be talking about insect numbers at large and not only bees. The study of biodiversity has an extremely difficult time modeling these kinds of changes, and that's probably why many scientists won't go to bat against this kind of land use change. A self-respecting scientist won't say that converting croplands to monocultures ready for insecticide use lead to biodiversity die-off because it's hard to actually track the fluctuations between species. It takes so much time to collect data to analyze before we even get an inkling of the interplay. We understand so little about the microscale interactions and how it fits into our larger understanding of agriculture and land development. For those who think this is all overblown and alarmist, go sit on the grass -- if you can find a patch -- and stare at a spot until it comes alive. Things are moving around and teeming with a multitude of species of plants and insects. The reality you see escapes unnoticed until you stop to think about the ecological systems that underpin our fragile existence. Our health depends on a functional biosphere. If we cannot figure out how to share the earth with its other inhabitants, what the fuck are we doing going to Mars?
- veddox 4y ago
  While I heartily agree with most of your comment, I must strongly disagree with the third paragraph (this is exactly what I'm doing my PhD on): > many scientists won't go to bat against this kind of land use change. A self-respecting scientist won't say that converting croplands to monocultures ready for insecticide use lead to biodiversity die-off because it's hard to actually track the fluctuations between species Although you are correct that the details are complicated and different species respond in different ways, the overall picture is abundantly clear. Intensive agriculture with large monocultures, simplified landscapes, and heavy fertiliser/pesticide input is wreaking havoc on biodiversity around the world. The scientific literature has been very explicit about this for over twenty years [e.g. 1-5], and lots of scientists (including my colleagues and I) are actively engaging with farmers, NGOs, and policy-makers to find workable solutions to ameliorate the problem. [1] https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2005.00782.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2005.00782.x [2] https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1253425 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1253425 [3] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.03.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.03.002 [4] https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14606 https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14606 [5] https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abg6995 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abg6995
LightG 4y ago
Well, this year in the UK I've seen practically none when normally I'd see hundreds. n=1
- jspash 4y ago
  n++ (sorry if this comment doesn't abide by the HN rules. i just thought it would be appreciated around here)
dontbenebby 4y ago
The bees are very much alive, the only decent beam* for parkour near me has a hive inside it now. * the key is do it next to a bike lane, they're easier to look out for and rarely in the lane at all in cyberpunk appalachia
Jedd 4y ago
I thought that Varroa destructor (a mite that attacks bees) had been determined to be a big causal factor? Improving tools for beekeepers, mostly chemical treatments, have ameliorated the situation. Here in Australia we're V. destructor free. Well mostly. We've had 3 incursions, two of which were controlled, and the third is happening now with some fierce responses (colony and equipment destruction within a wide radius). It's understood that this pest would destroy remaining feral colonies of honeybees (probably a good thing), but also have a huge cost for beekeepers and other susceptible (native) species.
- conorcleary 4y ago
  Ferel colonies of honeybees provide genetic diversity.
  - Jedd 4y ago
    Perhaps, but at what cost? In Australia we got small hive beetle about fifteen years ago, and if we didn't have feral colonies these things would be much easier to manage. As it stands, feral colonies are breeding grounds for these and other pests and diseases, and also put our native bees at risk (by disease or competition). I also have at least two beekeepers within 10km of me that are actively selecting and breeding up queens with very different priorities over characteristics, so I would expect that genetic diversity isn't at huge risk within the beekeeping / honeybee community.
unity1001 4y ago
Eu banned neonicotinoids on 1 September 2020. That's what happened. Which caused the US to pressure the Eu to dump Monsantanto on Bayer as a retaliation. Bayer bought Monsanto. Thats it.
halffaday 4y ago
Seemed like an OK article, but punctuating your essay with a cheerful reference to a violent counter-intelligence operation by the Chinese Communist Party that crushed free-thought for generations is so tone deaf it makes me doubt the author’s judgment on everything else.
coward123 4y ago
Hobby beekeeper here... I kinda disagree with her final summary... I get her point, but there are benefits to encouraging more people to keep them: -- Additional pollinators. -- Awareness. I've witnessed for myself in my own backyard the effects of our unusual weather this spring (ahem: climate change) through observing how my bees are interacting with my garden and trees. -- Overall benefit: Personally, tending them makes for great therapy and my neighbors love the honey. -- Advocacy. When you are in-tune with the impact of climate change, pesticides, herbicides, and overall aware of the ecology around you, you are more likely to make political and consumer choices based on those learned / observed experiences. Perhaps its a coincidence, but I noticed more native bees in my garden now too. I don't think I've done anything net-new in terms of flowers or trees since I started keeping honey bees, but maybe I'm just more aware of the native bees now? Disappointed I've not been able to attract Mason bees, but I've got at least three other varieties buzzing around regularly and I've identified the hive of at least one of those types.
hnuaer 4y ago
mvidal01 4y ago
Bumblebee populations are down in the US N.E. From October 6, 2021 The American Bumblebee Has Nearly Vanished From Eight States https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/american-bumblebee-has-vanished-from-eight-us-states-180978817/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/american-bumblebee...
sam_goody 4y ago
Um, "bee"? What's that? Seriously, I used to see MANY more bees than I have in the past two years, so any conclusion that the bees (or other insects) are OK, is anecdotally wrong.
- 8fingerlouie 4y ago
  I remember driving with my parents during summer, and the windshield would be completely covered in dead insects. These days, driving even for a couple of hours will at most leave a couple of dead insects on the windshield, so it's not just the bees.

318 points by nsoonhui 4y ago

I planted these, as my wife and I call them, "bee seeds" https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08P2GMM6L https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08P2GMM6L

jb1991 4y ago

I thought this was going to be about the impending doom of the Mexican killer bees we were all warned about in the 80s but that never came. It was in the news for months about a cloud of killer bees.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
One problem with the news is that every issue of concern gets blown way out of proportion in the news until it sounds like some kind of existential disaster, and then when total disaster does not come, people think the issue wasn't nonsense. But in reality many of these things are a real problem, just not quite at the scale the news has made it out to be. But what I see time and time again is people dismissing issues of concern because of how the media treated the issue, when what we should really be doing is trying to read through the media's sensationalism to the underlying facts. But I don't think enough people have really internalized how much of the media is sensationalism and lies. People know it when you ask them, but then they go on and believe it all anyway.
artmageddon 4y ago
I thought they were the Africanized ones? Those were the ones I read about as a kid in my school library, and the way they depicted their projected spread across the USA made it look like a pestilence worthy of Revelation. I honestly thought I wasn't going to live to become an adult because we'd all be over taken by super aggressive bees.
- jb1991 4y ago
  They were supposedly spreading north from Mexico if I remember. To kill us all indeed.
  - jb1991 4y ago
    Just found these: https://groovyhistory.com/killer-bees-1970s https://groovyhistory.com/killer-bees-1970s https://blue-succubus.livejournal.com/83977.html https://blue-succubus.livejournal.com/83977.html?

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Tangentially related, I wonder if anyone has done a meta-analysis about media reported calamities, like Zika, the bee population dying off, etc., and doing a follow up. Then comparing it to what the media reported initially. Was this accurate, blown out of proportion, understated, or simply sensational reporting?

lkbm 4y ago
SSC did a blog post about the various environmental panics of the 1990s. Some were real, some weren't; some were solved, some weren't[0]. [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-environmentalism/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e...
- lisper 4y ago
  These historical successes are encouraging, but it is very important not to extrapolate any of them to anthropogenic climate change. The processes underlying every single one of the examples in the SSC article operate on time scales of years or decades. CO2 causes effects over centuries and persists for millennia. It is a completely different beast.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    The atmospheric chemistry one was Ozone which turned out to be real, and was solved through regulation.
    - lisper 4y ago
      Yes, but you've missed the point: the problem with ozone was depletion in the upper atmosphere by CFCs. But CFCs do not persist for millennia and ozone is continually produced by natural processes. So if you stop emitting CFCs the problem naturally fixes itself in a short period of time (a few decades). But even if we reduced CO2 emissions to zero tomorrow that would not solve the problem because we are already at 150% of pre-industrial CO2, and CO2 persists for thousands of years. We've taken carbon that was sequestered by natural processes over a period of hundreds of millions of years and released it back into the atmosphere in a period of a few hundred years. That genie will not go quietly or quickly back into its bottle.

40four 4y ago

Great article! One of the first I’ve ever seen that breaks down the complexities of the bee problem in a thoughtful, reasonable way. The slew of articles we’ve seen is the last 5-10 years about the ‘Bee Apocalypse’ were largely either highly misleading, poorly researched, or just plain biased by one agenda or another. It used to make me really angry. I’m sure I could dig up past rants I’ve made about it here on HN. Very nice to finally see a detailed objective explanation of the situation.

MrYellowP 4y ago
> or just plain biased by one agenda or another. When it reaches mainstream news, there's always an agenda.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- synu 4y ago
  So just insinuations and “do your own research?” I’m intrigued as to who the nefarious entity is with their shadowy plan to protect pollinators that the media is conspiring to hide.
  - MrYellowP 4y ago
    Can you just not parrot the same thoughtless nonsense as most people do? It's not intelligent behaviour. Instead it's completely dismissing something absolutely possible, proven by actual history, unless you wish to believe that no state ever controlled the mass media, ever. Fact of the matter is that in Austria this has been happening for the last two years in such an obvious fashion that it's scary. The former-former chancellor raised what's colloquially called the "propaganda budget" by ten times to 200 Million+. Do you think they do that for no reason? Nowadays all the mass media (the publications with the widest reach, if you prefer), here in Austria write and show solely what the governments wants. There is no dissenting thought to read whatsoever. Not a single critical thing. During the two covid years they also completely blocked out every news from outside regarding it. What went on with that, and still does, is absolutely insane and corrupt to the core. Did you know that Austria, while everyone else already moved on, still mandated lockdowns and masks? Did you know that, in vienna, masks were still mandatory until a week (two?) ago? Did you know that there's a huge scandal looming around this, because it appears that people in the government know people in companies which coincidentially sell masks? Did you know that Austria and Germany were the only countries mandating FFP2 masks specifically and people here had no idea about this? There was one news outlet which brought a big article about the "corona experts" of the government. It turns out they were all paid by pfizer. Would you call that independent and unbiased? Did you know that Reporters without borders lowered our "press freedom index", because it noticable got worse? There's another group, I forgot the name. They asses the "democracy level" of a nation. We've got put down from "liberal democracy" to "electoral democracy". You have no idea of the shit that happened here in the last two years. Zero. None. You have no idea what can happen to you and where you live. Anyone believing that Hitler can't happen again ... ... will help making sure Hitler will happen again. Did you know that the mass media outlets in the USA are only controlled by a few rich people who own a shitton of daughter companies people believe to be local media? Rich people, who belong to the social circle of rich people, who, as you most likely know, have strong influence in the government. What about the soviet union? Are you claiming they had independent press? Do you believe that, when there's an entity which continuously orders lots of advertising space in a medium, it does not gain control? I wash your back, you wash mine? Are you really that naive? Do you truly believe the media tells you the truth and not what they want you to hear? Then why would sensationalism be a thing? Dude. When you respond, first think for yourself. If all you can do is writing oneliners without any actual points in it, then you're not fit for a discussion. It makes you come across as someone who's going to REEEE at me eventually. Let's try again? (PS: oh and ... you can look all this up. It's all verifyable. DYOR or stop believing you're smarter than others, because you might not be.)

photochemsyn 4y ago

(1) Stop using neonicotinoid pesticides. There are plenty of alternatives for protecting food crops from insect infestations, such as neem oil applied as a foliar spray or a soil soak in response to infestations. Neonictoninoides are based on the tobacco nicotine molecule structure, but are typically chlorinated and modified to make them more persistent and toxic to insects relative to animals. There's a good argument for banning the entire class due to their persistent ecological effects on beneficial native insect populations. https://organic-center.org/research/neonicotinoid-pesticides-have-long-term-effects-wild-bee-populations https://organic-center.org/research/neonicotinoid-pesticides... (2) Have undisturbed habitat set aside for wild bee populations. This can be something as simple as maintaining undisturbed hedgerows on the sides of agricultural fields, but in general means maintaining a fair amount of undisturbed native habitat. https://www.planetbee.org/planet-bee-blog//native-bee-series-intro-to-native-bees https://www.planetbee.org/planet-bee-blog//native-bee-series...

42e6e8c8-f7b8-4 4y ago
Demonization of neonics is misplaced. You can spray at night when bees aren't active. You can spray when your plants aren't in bloom and attracting bees. Oh well, the 2 minutes hate have emerged against neonics and farmers pivot like they ways do.
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  If we're talking about trying to stem the destruction of wild species here (The problem really isn't about domesticated honeybees), then you should definitely consider the fact that spraying at night won't help those wild bees which are nocturnal [1], nor does your point of view on these address the fact that these pesticides have a degree of environmental persistence. [2] This isn't demonization, it's just straight facts when there's plenty of alternatives out there which aren't feeding the giant agri-industrial complex behemoth. [1] https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/do-bees-fly-at-night.html https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/do-bees-fly-at-night.html [2] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b06388 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b06388

ck2 4y ago

Horizontal well fracking was perfected/took-off in 2006 https://ballotpedia.org/File:EIA_fracked_wells_2015.png https://ballotpedia.org/File:EIA_fracked_wells_2015.png Wells are burnt off for months, the more wells the more burnoff. People get sick up to 60 miles away from the burnoff, I wonder how that affects wildlife.

erulabs 4y ago
If fracking was related, we'd see a dramatically higher die-off around the permian basin and more or less no die-off whatsoever in the north-west and north-east. This isn't quite what we see: https://fractracker.org https://fractracker.org and https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-map-highlights-bee-population-declines-across-us-180962268/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-map-highlights... Now, as for fracking and air pollution, I am not an expert, but I did have a very interesting set of discussions with a fracking engineer who made a good argument that fracking shale in particular has dramatically decreased air pollution from oil extraction. Here is an article about it https://www.energyindepth.org/report-data-indicate-that-massive-improvements-in-air-quality-health-a-direct-function-of-shale/ https://www.energyindepth.org/report-data-indicate-that-mass... (should be noted that this website is run by the oil industry, so take this line of argument with some salt).
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  Thanks for the information. What about water table pollution? Those videos of people's tap water lighting on fire certainly stuck with me [1] [1] https://youtu.be/1zagvo75RJo https://youtu.be/1zagvo75RJo
  - ck2 4y ago
    The water is the least of your problems with fracking. It costs a lot but you can import your water. You cannot however import your air. https://news.wsu.edu/press-release/2022/03/08/natural-gas-flares-likely-source-of-respiratory-illness-spike/ https://news.wsu.edu/press-release/2022/03/08/natural-gas-fl...

kibwen 4y ago

This article buries its lede, which is about how honey bees get all the attention but are at less risk than wild bees: > And that brings us to the actual problem. The honey bee (Apis mellifera) is only one of about 20 thousand different bee species. The non-honey bees are usually referred to as wild bees, and each location has its native species. According to an estimate from researchers at Cornell University in 2006, wild bees contribute to the pollination of 85 percent of crops in agriculture." > [...] > But last year the magazine Cell published the results of a study with a global estimate for the situation of wild bees. The authors looked at the numbers of bee species that were collected or observed over time using data publicly available at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. They found that even though the number of records has been increasing, the number of different species in the records has been sharply decreasing in the past decades. > The decline rates differ between the continents, but the species numbers are dropping steeply everywhere except for Oceania. The researchers say there’s a number of factors in play here, such as the expansion of monocultures, loss of native habitat, pesticides, climate change, and bee trade that also trades around pathogens. > So the problems that wild bees face are similar to those of honey bees, but they have an additional problem which is… honeybees. Honey bees compete with wild bees for food and habitat and they also pass on viruses. Now, a big honey bee colony can deal with viruses by throwing out the infected bees. But this doesn’t work for wild bees because they don’t live in large colonies. And worse, when honey bees and wild bees fight for food they seem to both lose out.

jamal-kumar 4y ago
I think the colloquial term for (edit; the most commonly well-known) many wild bees in English is "bumblebees". They're often burrowing species that don't have honey producing hives (They do stuff like make little caves in moss, dirt, and underbrush), and are often crucial pollinators of certain species of plants which are specifically attractive to certain wild bees (Orchids are a good example here) but which domesticated honeybees might not even touch. I was once dreaming how cool it would be to get into beekeeping but after realizing it might be at a greater detriment to wild species in my area those dreams have become somewhat faded.
- 4y ago

BurningFrog 4y ago

People will always click on apocalypse stories, so the market will keep supplying them.

agumonkey 4y ago
If there's one bubble that should burst it's the media. There's too much noise nowadays. And yeah it taps onto lazy human reflexes.
throwaway5752 4y ago
You didn't read the article, did you? The author did not diminish CCD. Let me spoil it for you, this is the summary "It’s really just a matter of time until there’ll be too few bees to pollinate some of the flowers or too few insects to support some of the birds, or too few birds to spread seeds and so on. And we may be able to fix a few of these problems with technology, but not all of them. So, while it is important to talk to your kids about the birds and the bees, it really is important to talk to your kids about the birds and the bees. We simply don’t know what’s going to happen in response to what we do, and I’m afraid we’re not paying attention which is why I’m standing here recording this video. Because if we don’t pay attention, one day we’ll be surprised to be remembered that in the end we, too, are just part of the ecosystem." Our situation is still really bad and we don't even know the extent of how bad it is. Everyone just reflexively has to believe it's not really the end of the world as we've known it for most of human history, and that we can't really be bringing about an extinction cycle that will end a significant percentage of species. We are, though, every scientist in the field knows it. We are inducing a hot earth out of the planetary cycle because of carbon dioxide at the same time we're weakening ecosystem. It's going to end badly, and instinctively we all know it.
systemvoltage 4y ago
Succint and accurate. Massive rebound of the coral growth? No one wants to report that: https://twitter.com/alexepstein/status/1440696877079433220 https://twitter.com/alexepstein/status/1440696877079433220
- throwaway5752 4y ago

peteradio 4y ago

> However, the numbers may sound more alarming than they really are because honey bees are efficiently bred and managed by humans. Could that be part of the problem, they mention diversity loss in habitat, how about diversity of honeybee genetics. At the same time, HoneyBees are basically barnyard animals, we don't monitor the collapse of pig populations as they head to the slaughterhouse. I understand its not quite an apt analogy because that is the known causative agent and nobody is trying to slaughter their HoneyBees. All the same, they are not natural, I wonder if the public realizes that.

solardev 4y ago
Honeybees are basically an invasive species that humans brought to the Americas in order to pollinate old-world crops (and also harvest honey). The thing is, we've replaced a lot of native new-world ecosystems and foods with old-world crops that depend on old-world bees. There are a few separate problems that the media often mixes up: One is that our old-world crops aren't getting enough old-world bees to meet their pollination needs. Separately, new-world bees (what the article calls "wild bees") are also being replaced by old-world bees, losing out in competition, and not being cared for by professional beekeepers. They're more vulnerable, less protected, and less monitored. To top it all off, many kinds of bees, old-world or new, are also suffering from the cumulative (and unfortunately complex) domino effects of habitat loss, pesticides, climate change, etc. I think what's happening in the media is that journalists, knowingly or not, are using #2 and #3 to amplify the concern of #1 even though they're not always aligned (e.g., old-world bees are often one of the reasons contributing to the decline of native new-world bees). It's relatively harder to get the public to care about an industrial economics problem (#1, where farmers have to resort to expensive human manual pollination instead of cheap bees), so trying to sell that as environmental crisis a la Silent Spring gets more eyeballs.
- peteradio 4y ago
  To which old-world crops do you refer?
  - 4y ago

vr46 4y ago

It probably helps that millions of people are helping insect and bird populations by planting stacks of wildflowers, doing No Mow May, and being a bit nicer to local wildlife which all adds up.

bmitc 4y ago
Just as a note, it is important that people plant native wildflowers and not just any wildflowers.
hinkley 4y ago
If you're trying to help bumble bees, they tend to like to build their nests in the ground under/around rocks, or occasionally in dense duff like straw bales/wattles. Last year I had a plant to move a flat stone behind a masonry retaining wall on my property to be a hat on a low stone wall that extended off of the end of it, hoping to create some bee habitat. The rock turned out to be too heavy to move, and as soon as I started jostling it, bumble bees came out from under it to see what the ruckus was. So apparently that rock was working just fine where it was. Instead I bought some new stone, but I haven't observed any bees so far this year. Some people use old pots for this task, but I know people, and an upturned pot is going to be inspected, potentially destroying the hive. Kids in particular would be both more prone to this, and more traumatized to learn what they'd done. A big ol' rock is less of an attractive hazard.
- peteradio 4y ago
  I unwittingly disturbed a solo bumblebee who made his winter home in my compost pile. I wasn't quite sure what I came across, I'd unearthed a wildly vibrating ball of fine fluff, once I teased it apart out flew a big ol' bumblebee. I've got dozens of bumblebees around my yard this part of the summer as our comfrey goes to flower. I believe they winter among my raspberries where its basically an undisturbed hugelkultur mound. Besides bumblebees and carpenter bees I'm pretty much unaware if I'm looking at a wild bee or some type of fly. There are at least a dozen probably closer to two dozen different bee/fly species on the raspberries alone this time of year. I also see honeybees but they stick to the clover, I will see more of them when sunflowers and stonecrop flower. I feel very fortunate to see that kind of variety, we even get monarch butterflies enough to cause the branches to move under their collective weight, I wasn't aware that happened outside of Mexico.

akrod1 4y ago

Honeybees are dying en masse from diseases. Yet they are being neglected by the animal health industry. We need safe and sustainable solutions to help protect the world's honeybees. Dalan Animal health is developing the worlds first honeybee vaccine. To learn more go to: https://www.dalan.com/ https://www.dalan.com/

rob_c 4y ago

Simply put. Please America stop using more and more artificial modern chemicals in your farming and go back to tried and tested agricultural methods. Your soil is getting destroyed through mega tractors. Your buying everything glaxo can sell and your harming your own wasteland that for some reason you grow copious amounts of corn on. The problem is still there and making an article suggesting that it's not for a (surprise twist...), "the problem is worst than you think" ending, is just turning a topic into a discussion that should be settled fact.

jl6 4y ago
Artificial modern chemicals increase yield, which reduces food price. Yes, we should use less of those chemicals. Yes, that will hit the poorest hardest. Is this problem solvable? Maybe. But let’s not pretend it’s simple.
- toss1 4y ago
  it will really hit the poor hard when the soil depletion reduces yield permanently -and the phosphate supply is already coming to the end and costs increasing
- rob_c 4y ago
  Please stop defending the failing quo with "but what can we do about manbearpig...". One of the first solutions is stop growing corn badly in the wrong place and grow more appropriate crops elsewhere. I never claimed it was easy I claim that it's obvious.
Turing_Machine 4y ago
> go back to tried and tested agricultural methods https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/images/US_Corn_Yld_Trend.png https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/images/US... "Tried and tested" agricultural methods produced about 20 bushels of corn per acre. Current "artificial modern chemicals" methods produce about 160. Eight times as much. > your harming your own wasteland that for some reason you grow copious amounts of corn on The reason is that it feeds a substantial portion of the planet.

excalibur 4y ago

> Whatever happened to the Bee Apocalypse? The same thing that happened to the regular apocalypse. It's still moving closer every day, it's just taking longer than anticipated and causing some to lose patience.

epgui 4y ago
These things tend to happen slowly and then very, very quickly.

cainxinth 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations > “Some of the insects most affected include bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, dragonflies and damselflies.” Great. It’s gonna be nothing but roaches, mosquitos, and ants eventually.

hinkley 4y ago
Don't forget house flies.
tintedfireglass 4y ago
Mosquitoes are actually an important pollinators for many species. Mosquitoes aren't parasites they need blood only during their reproduction cycle

BirAdam 4y ago

What happened is that the apocalypse did happen, is still happening, and will continue to happen until such time as people quit using tons of pesticides. Worse is that warmer air usually means more oxygen is available which should make insect and arachnid populations explode, and should result in physically larger insects and arachnids. That we do not see this speaks to the health of these populations.

goatlover 4y ago
So an apocalypse can happen for an indefinite period of time? I'm calling BS on the use of that term. A decline in some insect populations is not an "apocalypse". An apocalypse would be a massive extinction level event on a global scale, like when a giant rock slams into the Earth, or there's continuous volcanic activity for a million years.

tcmart14 4y ago

Still happening, it’s just now maintaining bee colonies and taking them on the road to pollinate is now an industry.

mistrial9 4y ago
there is a single man who was/is credited with starting this so-called industry -- it was on the cover of a New York Times sunday supplement, long ago.. not everyone was thrilled by this, as you can imagine. When big trucked-bee death event happened contemporaneously with documented colony collapse, I bet that he had his name scrubbed from more than one website.

hammock 4y ago

The bee apocalypse is still here. The bees haven’t come back. Other fauna have declined as well, without us noticing. I go to northern Maine a few times a year and I’m always looking for moose. I used to be able to find them. Now I only see them when I’m in the air (from a plane). My friend showed me a study the state did tracking 60 newborn moose calves. Due to overwhelming winter tick population, 90%(!) did not survive the first year, and therefore could not reproduce. This problem has led to a massive decline of moose.

mulmen 4y ago
Do you have a link to the study? I’m curious how that survival rate compares to the past.
- scruple 4y ago
  I found an article about it because I was also curious. https://www.mainepublic.org/environment-and-outdoors/2022-05-18/most-moose-calves-in-part-of-maine-died-this-year-as-a-tiny-predator-benefits-from-warmer-weather https://www.mainepublic.org/environment-and-outdoors/2022-05...

tehchromic 4y ago

Humans are wiping out the planetary biome as predicted

tacocataco 4y ago
Do you think industrialization led to atrophy of our ability to adapt to our environments? (The reason we're apex predator) Or maybe modern civilization requires more long term planning then our brains are wired for?

zahma 4y ago

I appreciate that she draws the link between monoculture crops, land use, and the health of ecosystems upon which agriculture depends. Organics are important not because GMOs are the enemy but rather because the land use change is inherently bad for all life in that area. GMOs don't have to lead to monoculture crops that span acres or rampant neonicotinoid insecticides, but they often do, and it's precisely at that point we can see drastic changes in a biome's stability and therefore the health of bees among many other pollinators. That's why we need to be talking about insect numbers at large and not only bees. The study of biodiversity has an extremely difficult time modeling these kinds of changes, and that's probably why many scientists won't go to bat against this kind of land use change. A self-respecting scientist won't say that converting croplands to monocultures ready for insecticide use lead to biodiversity die-off because it's hard to actually track the fluctuations between species. It takes so much time to collect data to analyze before we even get an inkling of the interplay. We understand so little about the microscale interactions and how it fits into our larger understanding of agriculture and land development. For those who think this is all overblown and alarmist, go sit on the grass -- if you can find a patch -- and stare at a spot until it comes alive. Things are moving around and teeming with a multitude of species of plants and insects. The reality you see escapes unnoticed until you stop to think about the ecological systems that underpin our fragile existence. Our health depends on a functional biosphere. If we cannot figure out how to share the earth with its other inhabitants, what the fuck are we doing going to Mars?

veddox 4y ago
While I heartily agree with most of your comment, I must strongly disagree with the third paragraph (this is exactly what I'm doing my PhD on): > many scientists won't go to bat against this kind of land use change. A self-respecting scientist won't say that converting croplands to monocultures ready for insecticide use lead to biodiversity die-off because it's hard to actually track the fluctuations between species Although you are correct that the details are complicated and different species respond in different ways, the overall picture is abundantly clear. Intensive agriculture with large monocultures, simplified landscapes, and heavy fertiliser/pesticide input is wreaking havoc on biodiversity around the world. The scientific literature has been very explicit about this for over twenty years [e.g. 1-5], and lots of scientists (including my colleagues and I) are actively engaging with farmers, NGOs, and policy-makers to find workable solutions to ameliorate the problem. [1] https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2005.00782.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2005.00782.x [2] https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1253425 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1253425 [3] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.03.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.03.002 [4] https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14606 https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14606 [5] https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abg6995 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abg6995

LightG 4y ago

Well, this year in the UK I've seen practically none when normally I'd see hundreds. n=1

jspash 4y ago
n++ (sorry if this comment doesn't abide by the HN rules. i just thought it would be appreciated around here)

dontbenebby 4y ago

The bees are very much alive, the only decent beam* for parkour near me has a hive inside it now. * the key is do it next to a bike lane, they're easier to look out for and rarely in the lane at all in cyberpunk appalachia

Jedd 4y ago

I thought that Varroa destructor (a mite that attacks bees) had been determined to be a big causal factor? Improving tools for beekeepers, mostly chemical treatments, have ameliorated the situation. Here in Australia we're V. destructor free. Well mostly. We've had 3 incursions, two of which were controlled, and the third is happening now with some fierce responses (colony and equipment destruction within a wide radius). It's understood that this pest would destroy remaining feral colonies of honeybees (probably a good thing), but also have a huge cost for beekeepers and other susceptible (native) species.

conorcleary 4y ago
Ferel colonies of honeybees provide genetic diversity.
- Jedd 4y ago
  Perhaps, but at what cost? In Australia we got small hive beetle about fifteen years ago, and if we didn't have feral colonies these things would be much easier to manage. As it stands, feral colonies are breeding grounds for these and other pests and diseases, and also put our native bees at risk (by disease or competition). I also have at least two beekeepers within 10km of me that are actively selecting and breeding up queens with very different priorities over characteristics, so I would expect that genetic diversity isn't at huge risk within the beekeeping / honeybee community.

unity1001 4y ago

Eu banned neonicotinoids on 1 September 2020. That's what happened. Which caused the US to pressure the Eu to dump Monsantanto on Bayer as a retaliation. Bayer bought Monsanto. Thats it.

halffaday 4y ago

Seemed like an OK article, but punctuating your essay with a cheerful reference to a violent counter-intelligence operation by the Chinese Communist Party that crushed free-thought for generations is so tone deaf it makes me doubt the author’s judgment on everything else.

coward123 4y ago

Hobby beekeeper here... I kinda disagree with her final summary... I get her point, but there are benefits to encouraging more people to keep them: -- Additional pollinators. -- Awareness. I've witnessed for myself in my own backyard the effects of our unusual weather this spring (ahem: climate change) through observing how my bees are interacting with my garden and trees. -- Overall benefit: Personally, tending them makes for great therapy and my neighbors love the honey. -- Advocacy. When you are in-tune with the impact of climate change, pesticides, herbicides, and overall aware of the ecology around you, you are more likely to make political and consumer choices based on those learned / observed experiences. Perhaps its a coincidence, but I noticed more native bees in my garden now too. I don't think I've done anything net-new in terms of flowers or trees since I started keeping honey bees, but maybe I'm just more aware of the native bees now? Disappointed I've not been able to attract Mason bees, but I've got at least three other varieties buzzing around regularly and I've identified the hive of at least one of those types.

hnuaer 4y ago

mvidal01 4y ago

Bumblebee populations are down in the US N.E. From October 6, 2021 The American Bumblebee Has Nearly Vanished From Eight States https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/american-bumblebee-has-vanished-from-eight-us-states-180978817/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/american-bumblebee...

sam_goody 4y ago

Um, "bee"? What's that? Seriously, I used to see MANY more bees than I have in the past two years, so any conclusion that the bees (or other insects) are OK, is anecdotally wrong.

8fingerlouie 4y ago
I remember driving with my parents during summer, and the windshield would be completely covered in dead insects. These days, driving even for a couple of hours will at most leave a couple of dead insects on the windshield, so it's not just the bees.