6 ms·

The whole point of being alarmed of the Bee Apocalypse is that you look at the honey bees as an indicator, just like the lichens on trees are an indicator of ai

The whole point of being alarmed of the Bee Apocalypse is that you look at the honey bees as an indicator, just like the lichens on trees are an indicator of air pollution (few lichens mean a bad air quality). When honey bees are dwindling, pretty much all the insects are too. The Bee Apocalypse has not gone anywhere, it's just still here, and it is in fact an Insect Apocalypse, which is many orders of magnitude worse.

oblak 4y ago
I don't know what's driving it but I've been observing sharp changes in insect populations that visit our balcony which has been completely taken over by some kind of huge black wasp/hornet monsters. These bastards seem to hunt baby grasshoppers all day long and butcher all kinds of other wasps and bees, too. I used to find piles of chopped bodies but until competition got the message and show no more. I even found a stash of dead spiders they've managed to build inside a cupboard. I am starting to get worried. I do observe other changes in different species but this one is the wildest I've got. Haven't seen a big grasshopper in a decade. My cat used to hunt them all night. What changed? I don't know. Firebugs used to cover some trees in red 3 summers ago. Haven't seen one in months. Edit: as to why I am replying to your post? I liked it so much, I decided to share my extremely limited experience.
- henearkr 4y ago
  The decline of insects has brought an unbalance that may make some species over-represented as a consequence. But what you are seeing can also be a case of climate change moving the habitats of species around, and make them live where they did not live before (because also prevent them from living anymore where they had always been living). Edit: thanks for the compliment :D Just for the record, I'm an insects lover (also more generally a lover of Nature). And the situation is making me very, very sad.
  - sshine 4y ago
    Also, and I’m not saying this to deny climate change: variations between the coldness of a given winter and when spring onsets will, in general, greatly affect insect populations. Climate affects both how many survive the winter and how they migrate. Add oscillating patterns to that as predatory animals react delayed to that. Some years you will see huge winged ants, other years will be heavy with mosquitoes, other years will have giant hornets.
  - irrational 4y ago
    I’ve lived in a particular location for 22 years. This year is the very first one that I can recall seeing mosquitoes. Where did they come from and why are they here now? Your comment has me wondering if they are moving in because of climate change.
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  That sounds really alarming to have to be around (no pun intended). What part of the world is this in, I was hearing something about the pacific northwest experiencing invasive Japanese giant 'killer' hornets at some point in the past couple of years, I thought the course of action in that case was calling the wildlife authorities to try and stem the spread?
  - henearkr 4y ago
    I have seen an other wasp (I'm in Japan) than the 'giant killer hornets' killing (decapitating) what looked like either another wasp/bee either a bee-looking fly. It was quite a small-scale wasp, a black one with narrow white stripes, but its technique was very good. It just dropped next to where I was sitting holding its prey which was trying to escape.
  - oblak 4y ago
    Densely populated city in Bulgaria. I tried searching for the thing but aside from "$some_kind_of_asian_wasp taking over easter Europe", I've got nothing. I don't think it was the same species.
    - riffraff 4y ago
      Not the Japanese one, but there is an invasive Asian hornet in Europe since 15 years ago or so https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_hornet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_hornet
      - oblak 4y ago
        Not the same creature. The one I am talking about is all black, with slightly bluish tinted wings. There considerably bigger than most wasps/hornets. I don't know what I am dealing* with. * Not yet, and hopefully I won't have to
- rurban 4y ago
  You probably oversaw the fact that Great Britain again gave away the atomic bomb secrets to the hornet monsters. Before it was Pakistan, which delivered it to North Korea and Iran. If the hornets gave it the wasps is not yet proven, but everybody is very worried.
WhitneyLand 4y ago
>honey bees are dwindling It seems they are not dwindling. That was one of the clarifications of the piece. The bigger concern is the number of species rather than the number of honeybees.
- henearkr 4y ago
  I'd say that it is difficult for me to agree that the honey bee apocalypse is getting any better at all, as, in Europe at least, everybody is deploring a huge mortality in bees, and explicitely pointing the pesticides as culprits. But in case it would "seem to get better" (e.g. in the US), I agree: if honey bees are dwindling at some point (the wake up call), it shows that there is a bigger concern, but the bigger concern is still there even if we see again honey bees, it's an insect apocalypse (and we'll always see honey bees anyway, because they are actively bred by humans using nutrients grown with intrants from good ol' fossil fuel energy and all).
stefan_ 4y ago
Why would I do that? Closely related species compete for the same resources. 9 out of 10, one species "dwindling" just means another is gaining.
- henearkr 4y ago
  In this cas it does not. The insects as a whole are in decline.
  - goatlover 4y ago
    I've not heard insects like ants, beetles or flies being in decline. I've heard of bee colony collapse and declines in grasshoppers and monarch butterflies. But there are tons of other insects, some of which seem to do quite well around humans, whether we like it or not.
    - henearkr 4y ago
      Maybe you've heard of the "car windshield observation": we used to find so many dead insects on windshields some decades ago, and now it is obvious that there are way fewer. This is caused by the insect apocalypse. It's because the harm caused to the bees is from factors that strike as well other insects: mainly pesticides, and global warming.
      - harpersealtako 4y ago
        I think one of many issues with the car windshield observation is we don't have a good baseline. So we notice that in 1990 there were more bugs on our windshields compared to 2020 after a drive through Kansas. But maybe 2020's insect levels are actually a return to normal, preindustrial levels after an anomalous century of high bug populations? We don't have a bug windshield strike stats from 1890. Honestly it's such a dirty metric with so many compounding variables I'm shocked that anybody is seriously considering it as a meaningful data point beyond the most basic, surface-level understanding of the issue. To be honest the whole thing reeks of the usual hacker-news crowd issue where people want to pretend they know about a topic (e.g. systemic issues in pollinator/agricultural pest population management in high-intensity modern industrial agriculture) but are underestimating the complexity of the issues by a huge magnitude.
animal_spirits 4y ago
> just like the lichens on trees are an indicator of air pollution (few lichens mean a bad air quality). Lichen indicators for air pollution are fascinatingly more complicated than that. Certain lichens respond positively to air pollution due to excess nutrients like ammonia and nitrates in the air. Imagine an algal bloom but the nutrient pollution is in the air instead of in the water. The US Forest Service produced an interesting video overviewing these phenomena. Air Pollution & Lichens: A Tour of the Columbia River Gorge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3dPrgAkN3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3dPrgAkN3M

oblak 4y ago

I don't know what's driving it but I've been observing sharp changes in insect populations that visit our balcony which has been completely taken over by some kind of huge black wasp/hornet monsters. These bastards seem to hunt baby grasshoppers all day long and butcher all kinds of other wasps and bees, too. I used to find piles of chopped bodies but until competition got the message and show no more. I even found a stash of dead spiders they've managed to build inside a cupboard. I am starting to get worried. I do observe other changes in different species but this one is the wildest I've got. Haven't seen a big grasshopper in a decade. My cat used to hunt them all night. What changed? I don't know. Firebugs used to cover some trees in red 3 summers ago. Haven't seen one in months. Edit: as to why I am replying to your post? I liked it so much, I decided to share my extremely limited experience.

henearkr 4y ago
The decline of insects has brought an unbalance that may make some species over-represented as a consequence. But what you are seeing can also be a case of climate change moving the habitats of species around, and make them live where they did not live before (because also prevent them from living anymore where they had always been living). Edit: thanks for the compliment :D Just for the record, I'm an insects lover (also more generally a lover of Nature). And the situation is making me very, very sad.
- sshine 4y ago
  Also, and I’m not saying this to deny climate change: variations between the coldness of a given winter and when spring onsets will, in general, greatly affect insect populations. Climate affects both how many survive the winter and how they migrate. Add oscillating patterns to that as predatory animals react delayed to that. Some years you will see huge winged ants, other years will be heavy with mosquitoes, other years will have giant hornets.
- irrational 4y ago
  I’ve lived in a particular location for 22 years. This year is the very first one that I can recall seeing mosquitoes. Where did they come from and why are they here now? Your comment has me wondering if they are moving in because of climate change.
jamal-kumar 4y ago
That sounds really alarming to have to be around (no pun intended). What part of the world is this in, I was hearing something about the pacific northwest experiencing invasive Japanese giant 'killer' hornets at some point in the past couple of years, I thought the course of action in that case was calling the wildlife authorities to try and stem the spread?
- henearkr 4y ago
  I have seen an other wasp (I'm in Japan) than the 'giant killer hornets' killing (decapitating) what looked like either another wasp/bee either a bee-looking fly. It was quite a small-scale wasp, a black one with narrow white stripes, but its technique was very good. It just dropped next to where I was sitting holding its prey which was trying to escape.
- oblak 4y ago
  Densely populated city in Bulgaria. I tried searching for the thing but aside from "$some_kind_of_asian_wasp taking over easter Europe", I've got nothing. I don't think it was the same species.
  - riffraff 4y ago
    Not the Japanese one, but there is an invasive Asian hornet in Europe since 15 years ago or so https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_hornet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_hornet
    - oblak 4y ago
      Not the same creature. The one I am talking about is all black, with slightly bluish tinted wings. There considerably bigger than most wasps/hornets. I don't know what I am dealing* with. * Not yet, and hopefully I won't have to
rurban 4y ago
You probably oversaw the fact that Great Britain again gave away the atomic bomb secrets to the hornet monsters. Before it was Pakistan, which delivered it to North Korea and Iran. If the hornets gave it the wasps is not yet proven, but everybody is very worried.

WhitneyLand 4y ago

>honey bees are dwindling It seems they are not dwindling. That was one of the clarifications of the piece. The bigger concern is the number of species rather than the number of honeybees.

henearkr 4y ago
I'd say that it is difficult for me to agree that the honey bee apocalypse is getting any better at all, as, in Europe at least, everybody is deploring a huge mortality in bees, and explicitely pointing the pesticides as culprits. But in case it would "seem to get better" (e.g. in the US), I agree: if honey bees are dwindling at some point (the wake up call), it shows that there is a bigger concern, but the bigger concern is still there even if we see again honey bees, it's an insect apocalypse (and we'll always see honey bees anyway, because they are actively bred by humans using nutrients grown with intrants from good ol' fossil fuel energy and all).

stefan_ 4y ago

Why would I do that? Closely related species compete for the same resources. 9 out of 10, one species "dwindling" just means another is gaining.

henearkr 4y ago
In this cas it does not. The insects as a whole are in decline.
- goatlover 4y ago
  I've not heard insects like ants, beetles or flies being in decline. I've heard of bee colony collapse and declines in grasshoppers and monarch butterflies. But there are tons of other insects, some of which seem to do quite well around humans, whether we like it or not.
  - henearkr 4y ago
    Maybe you've heard of the "car windshield observation": we used to find so many dead insects on windshields some decades ago, and now it is obvious that there are way fewer. This is caused by the insect apocalypse. It's because the harm caused to the bees is from factors that strike as well other insects: mainly pesticides, and global warming.
    - harpersealtako 4y ago
      I think one of many issues with the car windshield observation is we don't have a good baseline. So we notice that in 1990 there were more bugs on our windshields compared to 2020 after a drive through Kansas. But maybe 2020's insect levels are actually a return to normal, preindustrial levels after an anomalous century of high bug populations? We don't have a bug windshield strike stats from 1890. Honestly it's such a dirty metric with so many compounding variables I'm shocked that anybody is seriously considering it as a meaningful data point beyond the most basic, surface-level understanding of the issue. To be honest the whole thing reeks of the usual hacker-news crowd issue where people want to pretend they know about a topic (e.g. systemic issues in pollinator/agricultural pest population management in high-intensity modern industrial agriculture) but are underestimating the complexity of the issues by a huge magnitude.

animal_spirits 4y ago

> just like the lichens on trees are an indicator of air pollution (few lichens mean a bad air quality). Lichen indicators for air pollution are fascinatingly more complicated than that. Certain lichens respond positively to air pollution due to excess nutrients like ammonia and nitrates in the air. Imagine an algal bloom but the nutrient pollution is in the air instead of in the water. The US Forest Service produced an interesting video overviewing these phenomena. Air Pollution & Lichens: A Tour of the Columbia River Gorge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3dPrgAkN3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3dPrgAkN3M