6 ms·

The standard practice for commercial crops is to bring in commercial hives of bees for pollination season that are shipped together via truck from crop to crop

The standard practice for commercial crops is to bring in commercial hives of bees for pollination season that are shipped together via truck from crop to crop and region to region. https://sweetharvestfoods.com/the-commercial-honey-bee-travel-route/ https://sweetharvestfoods.com/the-commercial-honey-bee-trave... That sounds like a great opportunity to spread the resistant parasites from hive to hive and region to region.

cogman10 1y ago
Doesn't even seem like this is something that couldn't or shouldn't be region locked. These companies are likely aren't saving more than a few percentage by centralizing and distributing.
Spivak 1y ago
Unless we change our farming practices there isn't much else you can do. You have acres and acres of land that are completely dead (as far as pollinators are concerned) for almost all of the year and then suddenly every plant blooms all at once and then goes away.
- humblebeekeeper 1y ago
  This is what so few people realize -- farming, as it's practiced in the US, is basically mining. It might appear to be lush nature, but the places we farm are deserts in many ways. We kill insect life, birds, mammals, and other supporting species. We remove most of nutrients from the soil and replace them chemically. A commercial orchard might as well be an Amazon datacenter from an environmental standpoint. If we want to change things, we need to fundamentally alter the way we grow food. It will be a bit harder -- we'll need regenerative methods, less reliable methods, more human labor, more weed prone, etc. -- but we can build food production into something that's much more sustainable and ecologically sound. Some farmers are already doing this, or experimenting with it, and I think there's at the very least a growing soil health mindset among small farmers.
  - pstuart 1y ago
    And the only way for that change to happen is to bake in monetary incentives that help drive it, whilst doing so in a political climate that is just fine with the way things are.
    - humblebeekeeper 1y ago
      I disagree. We can also continue to engage in revolutionary thought and practice locally. We can decide that collective and community health and wellbeing are more important than individual success. It's a more difficult road, but the capitalist mode of "just tweak the financial curves" is not the only way we can approach this problem. Just the most well supported today.
      - pstuart 1y ago
        We absolutely should continue to engage in revolutionary thought and practice locally, but without buy-in by the owners of the system it will always be just that: "local"
  - nancyminusone 1y ago
    I like to bring this up in regards to livestock. "If we shouldn't eat chickens, then why are they food shaped?" Well, they are food shaped! Most of the animals we eat are designed to be eaten, born and bred over thousands of years to achieve that goal. A chicken is a most unnatural animal. No other bird has any reason to lay 300 eggs per year. Livestock is as GMO as they come, just on a longer scale.
    - triceratops 1y ago
      The comment you responded to didn't say anything about GMO
      - datameta 1y ago
        The comment GP responded to was talking about how we have modified the environments of farms - talking about GMO livestock is a stone's toss away.
- GeekyBear 1y ago
  From what I've read, the hives that are seeing these severe die offs are the commercial hives that are being shipped around. It is possible to have local beekeepers who don't ship their hives across the country, and there are still untended wild hives. Those seem to be in better shape.
  - timr 1y ago
    Untended wild hives are probably also more genetically diverse, and therefore more robust to parasites and viruses.
    - cameron_b 1y ago
      It is important to remember that the hives out in the woods are not wild but cast-off swarms of domesticated honey bees, and that the mating behavior of honey bees will fold in genetics from many hives in a region ( drone congregation areas represent feral and backyard and commercial hives in a rather vast area ). The genetic research seems to point to the opposite happening - that because of pressures on honey bees from pesticides or pests ( and thereby viral pressure carried by various pests ) the feral and commercial populations track quite closely. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8991 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8991 - there's a lot here specifically relevant to this discussion but especially note the emergence of African Honey Bee genotype in wild populations. This paper is from 2015 analyzing the biodiversity response to the arrival of V. destructor ( varroa mites ) and Africanized bees were introduced in the early 1990s as well. The take-away is that until you have a 3 mile separation of water, assume that populations of bees in a land area are more related than not and face similar pressures in a given climate, whether feral or managed. Honey Bees especially ( but of course every living thing ) should be managed with an ecosystem mindset.
      - timr 1y ago
        A few things: a) African honey bees aren't domesticated populations, challenging your overall point. b) A 3 mile separation is not substantial (though I grant you that if most of the bees in any given cluster are introduced, then it might lead to more homogeneity). c) even within "wild" populations of whatever, you see local clusters of genetic similarity. It's been a while since I took population genetics, but IIRC this kind of local equilibrium was well-covered. Also, I haven't read the paper, but the abstract sure sounds like what I'm describing -- a sudden population bottleneck leads to rapid evolutionary adaptation in wild populations: "These findings suggest that genetically diverse honey bee populations can recover from introduced diseases by evolving rapid tolerance, while maintaining much of the standing genetic variation."
humblebeekeeper 1y ago
This has been the practice for more than a century. We saw the steepest declines post 2000s. While it almost certainly isn't helping, it's not the one root cause.
- GeekyBear 1y ago
  The practice wouldn't be problematic until after the parasites you are shipping with the hives evolve pesticide resistance/immunity. As soon as that gene arises, spreading it across the country becomes a bad idea.
- Calwestjobs 1y ago
  hives not open whole year have no mites. im not providing anything to anyone. i live with this statement as a fact. i will not comment anymore in this discussion. be(e) free to downvote.
  - humblebeekeeper 1y ago
    This is simply, objectively false.
timr 1y ago
Varoa mites are incredibly hard to control. Back in undergrad I worked in a fruit fly lab, and we would periodically have outbreaks, despite being about the most isolated, sterile population of insects you can imagine. I doubt that there's any hope at all of controlling mites in free-roaming honeybees. I'd wager that we've done damage with overuse of miticides (which are insecticides, btw -- the article doesn't connect those dots) in a misguided attempt to control nature.
- GeekyBear 1y ago
  > I doubt that there's any hope at all of controlling mites I'm more interested in no longer spreading the mite gene(s) for pesticide immunity across the country.
  - timr 1y ago
    Well that’s easy: stop using miticide. The resistance genes are not spreading due to physical transport, they’re spreading because of evolutionary selection.
    - GeekyBear 1y ago
      I would say that the pesticide immunity genes arise because of evolutionary selection, but once they come into existance commercial beekeeping practices quickly spread those genes from hive to hive and across the country.
      - timr 1y ago
        You might be right that the physical distribution plays a role, but the partial selective pressure of insecticide is like a resistance-generating machine -- as anyone who has tried to kill cockroaches will tell you. Regardless, I think we both agree that the extremely unnatural pressures of industrial agriculture are a root cause here.
        GeekyBear 1y ago
drtgh 1y ago
OffTopic: Something similar to fishing vessels, Fishing vessels are spreading parasites at hyper-accelerated speeds. This happens when they clean the guts of infected fish at sea without prior treatment and when they discard untargeted fish in the same way; The parasites disperse exponentially, within a loop, when such parasitised food spreads through the trophic. This has already happened on a planetary level. Also, to note, I think that if they start droping frozen guts into the sea as a treatment, our main defensive barrier at home (to froze fish some days before consumption) will eventually disappear when the parasites adapt (ie. not freezing them long enough until they die due neglect, would progressively disperse freeze-resistant strains in the wild).
- ponector 1y ago
  First time I hear someone is freezing fresh fish at home. Everyone I know tries to eat fresh never-frozen fish. I thought the main barier is to apply intense heat to the fish, not to freeze it.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - Thimothy 1y ago
    In places where fish is eaten raw (or lightly pickled) you NEED to freeze it before preparing it. Anisakis is no joke. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisakis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisakis
    - taeric 1y ago
      The first time we tried to pan sear some fresh salmon was about the last time we ever tried fresh salmon. Holy crap that is an eye opener. Took a long time to get over that feeling of seeing the parasites and learning that that is basically expected in wild fish.
  - dzhiurgis 1y ago
    In NZ if you do your own fishing you freeze guts and frames so you don't stink your rubbish bin and you drop it back to ocean on your next trip. Keeps chilly bin cold too.

cogman10 1y ago

Doesn't even seem like this is something that couldn't or shouldn't be region locked. These companies are likely aren't saving more than a few percentage by centralizing and distributing.

Spivak 1y ago

Unless we change our farming practices there isn't much else you can do. You have acres and acres of land that are completely dead (as far as pollinators are concerned) for almost all of the year and then suddenly every plant blooms all at once and then goes away.

humblebeekeeper 1y ago
This is what so few people realize -- farming, as it's practiced in the US, is basically mining. It might appear to be lush nature, but the places we farm are deserts in many ways. We kill insect life, birds, mammals, and other supporting species. We remove most of nutrients from the soil and replace them chemically. A commercial orchard might as well be an Amazon datacenter from an environmental standpoint. If we want to change things, we need to fundamentally alter the way we grow food. It will be a bit harder -- we'll need regenerative methods, less reliable methods, more human labor, more weed prone, etc. -- but we can build food production into something that's much more sustainable and ecologically sound. Some farmers are already doing this, or experimenting with it, and I think there's at the very least a growing soil health mindset among small farmers.
- pstuart 1y ago
  And the only way for that change to happen is to bake in monetary incentives that help drive it, whilst doing so in a political climate that is just fine with the way things are.
  - humblebeekeeper 1y ago
    I disagree. We can also continue to engage in revolutionary thought and practice locally. We can decide that collective and community health and wellbeing are more important than individual success. It's a more difficult road, but the capitalist mode of "just tweak the financial curves" is not the only way we can approach this problem. Just the most well supported today.
    - pstuart 1y ago
      We absolutely should continue to engage in revolutionary thought and practice locally, but without buy-in by the owners of the system it will always be just that: "local"
- nancyminusone 1y ago
  I like to bring this up in regards to livestock. "If we shouldn't eat chickens, then why are they food shaped?" Well, they are food shaped! Most of the animals we eat are designed to be eaten, born and bred over thousands of years to achieve that goal. A chicken is a most unnatural animal. No other bird has any reason to lay 300 eggs per year. Livestock is as GMO as they come, just on a longer scale.
  - triceratops 1y ago
    The comment you responded to didn't say anything about GMO
    - datameta 1y ago
      The comment GP responded to was talking about how we have modified the environments of farms - talking about GMO livestock is a stone's toss away.
GeekyBear 1y ago
From what I've read, the hives that are seeing these severe die offs are the commercial hives that are being shipped around. It is possible to have local beekeepers who don't ship their hives across the country, and there are still untended wild hives. Those seem to be in better shape.
- timr 1y ago
  Untended wild hives are probably also more genetically diverse, and therefore more robust to parasites and viruses.
  - cameron_b 1y ago
    It is important to remember that the hives out in the woods are not wild but cast-off swarms of domesticated honey bees, and that the mating behavior of honey bees will fold in genetics from many hives in a region ( drone congregation areas represent feral and backyard and commercial hives in a rather vast area ). The genetic research seems to point to the opposite happening - that because of pressures on honey bees from pesticides or pests ( and thereby viral pressure carried by various pests ) the feral and commercial populations track quite closely. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8991 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8991 - there's a lot here specifically relevant to this discussion but especially note the emergence of African Honey Bee genotype in wild populations. This paper is from 2015 analyzing the biodiversity response to the arrival of V. destructor ( varroa mites ) and Africanized bees were introduced in the early 1990s as well. The take-away is that until you have a 3 mile separation of water, assume that populations of bees in a land area are more related than not and face similar pressures in a given climate, whether feral or managed. Honey Bees especially ( but of course every living thing ) should be managed with an ecosystem mindset.
    - timr 1y ago
      A few things: a) African honey bees aren't domesticated populations, challenging your overall point. b) A 3 mile separation is not substantial (though I grant you that if most of the bees in any given cluster are introduced, then it might lead to more homogeneity). c) even within "wild" populations of whatever, you see local clusters of genetic similarity. It's been a while since I took population genetics, but IIRC this kind of local equilibrium was well-covered. Also, I haven't read the paper, but the abstract sure sounds like what I'm describing -- a sudden population bottleneck leads to rapid evolutionary adaptation in wild populations: "These findings suggest that genetically diverse honey bee populations can recover from introduced diseases by evolving rapid tolerance, while maintaining much of the standing genetic variation."

humblebeekeeper 1y ago

This has been the practice for more than a century. We saw the steepest declines post 2000s. While it almost certainly isn't helping, it's not the one root cause.

GeekyBear 1y ago
The practice wouldn't be problematic until after the parasites you are shipping with the hives evolve pesticide resistance/immunity. As soon as that gene arises, spreading it across the country becomes a bad idea.
Calwestjobs 1y ago
hives not open whole year have no mites. im not providing anything to anyone. i live with this statement as a fact. i will not comment anymore in this discussion. be(e) free to downvote.
- humblebeekeeper 1y ago
  This is simply, objectively false.

timr 1y ago

Varoa mites are incredibly hard to control. Back in undergrad I worked in a fruit fly lab, and we would periodically have outbreaks, despite being about the most isolated, sterile population of insects you can imagine. I doubt that there's any hope at all of controlling mites in free-roaming honeybees. I'd wager that we've done damage with overuse of miticides (which are insecticides, btw -- the article doesn't connect those dots) in a misguided attempt to control nature.

GeekyBear 1y ago
> I doubt that there's any hope at all of controlling mites I'm more interested in no longer spreading the mite gene(s) for pesticide immunity across the country.
- timr 1y ago
  Well that’s easy: stop using miticide. The resistance genes are not spreading due to physical transport, they’re spreading because of evolutionary selection.
  - GeekyBear 1y ago
    I would say that the pesticide immunity genes arise because of evolutionary selection, but once they come into existance commercial beekeeping practices quickly spread those genes from hive to hive and across the country.
    - timr 1y ago
      You might be right that the physical distribution plays a role, but the partial selective pressure of insecticide is like a resistance-generating machine -- as anyone who has tried to kill cockroaches will tell you. Regardless, I think we both agree that the extremely unnatural pressures of industrial agriculture are a root cause here.
      - GeekyBear 1y ago

drtgh 1y ago

OffTopic: Something similar to fishing vessels, Fishing vessels are spreading parasites at hyper-accelerated speeds. This happens when they clean the guts of infected fish at sea without prior treatment and when they discard untargeted fish in the same way; The parasites disperse exponentially, within a loop, when such parasitised food spreads through the trophic. This has already happened on a planetary level. Also, to note, I think that if they start droping frozen guts into the sea as a treatment, our main defensive barrier at home (to froze fish some days before consumption) will eventually disappear when the parasites adapt (ie. not freezing them long enough until they die due neglect, would progressively disperse freeze-resistant strains in the wild).

ponector 1y ago
First time I hear someone is freezing fresh fish at home. Everyone I know tries to eat fresh never-frozen fish. I thought the main barier is to apply intense heat to the fish, not to freeze it.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Thimothy 1y ago
  In places where fish is eaten raw (or lightly pickled) you NEED to freeze it before preparing it. Anisakis is no joke. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisakis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisakis
  - taeric 1y ago
    The first time we tried to pan sear some fresh salmon was about the last time we ever tried fresh salmon. Holy crap that is an eye opener. Took a long time to get over that feeling of seeing the parasites and learning that that is basically expected in wild fish.
- dzhiurgis 1y ago
  In NZ if you do your own fishing you freeze guts and frames so you don't stink your rubbish bin and you drop it back to ocean on your next trip. Keeps chilly bin cold too.