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I might have missed it, but this article seems to be making the common mistake of conflating native bee species with cultivated bees. I'd be interested in knowi
by jszymborski 3y ago
I might have missed it, but this article seems to be making the common mistake of conflating native bee species with cultivated bees. I'd be interested in knowing how native bee species are doing, especially since my understanding is that cultivated bees often compete with native bee species.
- Dig1t 3y ago>the honeybee has been the fastest-growing livestock segment in the country! And that doesn’t count feral honeybees, which may outnumber their captive cousins several times over.
- jzimbel 3y agoFeral honey bees (European honey bees living in a non-beekeeper-managed colony) are different from North American native bees: https://bugguide.net/node/view/475348 https://bugguide.net/node/view/475348
- nathanrf 3y agoFeral != Native. There are no honeybee species native to North America; all honeybees, including the feral ones, are descended from colonies imported from Europe (e.g. the "Western honeybee" apis mellifera). There are a lot of non-honeybee bee species native to North America though, and they now face competition from feral domesticated honeybees. It's unclear exactly how much impact they have- some research does treat honeybees as a harmful invasive species (similar to many other human-introduced species). Native bee species have a harder time getting good PR because they don't directly work for us, even though they are important pollinators for some native plants.
- giantg2 3y agoI think there at least used to be honey producing bee species in the southern US. I believe some are extinct now and others are only present in South America now.
- mattmaroon 3y agoSouth America has the stingerless variety and I’m very jealous.
- Baeocystin 3y agoMayan honeybees are native to the Yucatan, FWIW. They've also spread to Cuba.
- darth_avocado 3y agoFeral honey bees may be thriving but native bees are collapsing.
- bradley13 3y agoThis is important. Swamp the land with a monoculture of disease-prone bees. Of course this is going to have an impact on wild species. Probably massive, but no one seems to care. Rally strange.
- munificent 3y agoThe last five paragraphs are about this.
- poulsbohemian 3y agoAll the research I’m hearing around North America would indicate the fear about competition is overblown. Honey bees, not being native, don’t necessarily go after the same pollen sources as native bees. Some good research out of Alberta showed that native bees were for example going after native plants whereas the honey bees were shown to fly farther distances to find things like canola. In my own yard (hobby guy, not commercial) I have at least three types of native bees and I watch them cohabitate with my honey bees very similar to what the research in Canada demonstrated.
- aiauthoritydev2 3y agoHoneybees are not native to USA only bumblebees are.
- gerdesj 3y agoI suspect the US has the usual complement of solitary as well as social bees. A quick search brings up plenty of results.
- ricardobeat 3y agoYou missed it. The latter half of the article is about the difference between captive honeybees and wild ones, and also how the population has only increased due to aggressive expansion to counter colonies dying from disease and yellowjackets. > Grames said the consensus holds that pollinators, like all insects, are in decline — losing probably 1 to 2 percent a year.
- aeternum 3y agoWhat if the cycle is simply due to predator/prey dynamics? More captive honeybees mean more well-fed yellowjackets and thus more predatory pressure on both captive and wild honeybees. https://www2.nau.edu/lrm22/lessons/predator_prey/predator_prey.html https://www2.nau.edu/lrm22/lessons/predator_prey/predator_pr...