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Can anyone recommend a good source for background information about bees? 25,000 sounds like a huge number, but some quick googling (no idea how reliable the s

Can anyone recommend a good source for background information about bees? 25,000 sounds like a huge number, but some quick googling (no idea how reliable the sources are) seems to indicate that's about the number of bees in a hive. I'd like to have a better idea of whether this story is closer to, "Exterminators spray beehive, all the bees die" or "Colony collapse disorder threatens the existence of all life on earth"

andyl 13y ago
Numbers of bees in a hive grows and shrinks depending on the season and climate. Typical numbers might be 15-20K bees in winter, 60-80K bees in summer. Worker-Bee lifespan = ~2 months. All eggs laid by one queen!
- Blahah 13y ago
  Most of the bees were bumble bees (Bombus spp.), which have only hundreds of individuals in a hive. 25,000 honeybees could easily have been a single hive that died for any reason. 25,000 bumble bees is more alarming.
will_brown 13y ago
A least a starting point on Colony Collapse Disorder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder
sageikosa 13y ago
A dead deer found on the side of the road in Pennsylvania has more biomass.
- hnriot 13y ago
  but not impact on future food supply.
  - sageikosa 13y ago
    Since they were most likely killed by a pesticide, it's not an epidemic, and the remaining bees can make more, just like the remaining deer can make more, and the remaining rabbits can always make more rabbits.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Deer don't pollinate flowers.
  - run4yourlives 13y ago
    If a deer walked though a field it would stand to reason that it would encourage pollination. Bees are some of the best pollinators, but they aren't exclusive in this regard.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Well, it's a good thing fruit grows at ground-level then, where deer can pollinate it.
      - run4yourlives 13y ago
        Actually, most of the things that honey bees are critical in pollinating grow closer to the ground.
  - sageikosa 13y ago
    25000 bees are a minute fraction of the worldwide total. One deer is a minute fraction of the worldwide total, I'd assert their impact is on the same order of magnitude. Can we all stop examining local news and panicking globally? If you started finding lots of deer dead in the woods, I might be concerned; on the side of the road, not so much. If you started finding bees dead in their hive (which does happen, but not in this case), I might be concerned; finding them dead by bee toxic trees that have been recently sprayed with insecticide, not so much.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Can we all stop examining local news and panicking globally? Am I coming across as panicky? I don't really see that... I'm just pointing out that deer don't have the same keystone role in large ecosystems as major pollinators.
Blahah 13y ago
25,000 is a huge number because they were bumble bees, which exist in hives of hundreds of individuals (unlike honey bees, which can have tens of thousands). The story in a sentence is "Exterminators drench tree in mixed insecticide, kill thousands of insects from the tree and surrounding area". It has little to do with colony collapse disorder.
- roc 13y ago
  So something like every single bee in a couple hundred colonies flew out to a single pair of trees to be poisoned? Isn't that fairly odd behavior in and of itself? Wiki suggests bumble bees only range a few kilometers. Is it even normal to see that many colonies that close together?
  - Blahah 13y ago
    I suspect the number is inflated - it's unlikely (but not impossible) that anyone counted all the bees. Estimating that number by eye could be off by an order of magnitude. Probably the tree and surrounding vegetation were flowering abundantly, attracting many insects from the area. I would say thousands of insects on a large tree is not unfeasible at all, perhaps even tens of thousands. Whether they were all bees, and whether the bees were really all bumble bees, is not clear. You're right that 25,000 bumble bees in one place does sound logistically difficult to arrange. We can back-of-the-envelope it... (edit: increased foraging distance with data from reference, which slightly changes the conclusion) It would be ~150 colonies within a several kilometer radius. If we assume mean foraging distance of 10km [1], thats (a rather beautiful) 314km^2 of source area. We should probably also assume that the vast majority of bees in the area are not visiting those two trees, as there are likely other good sources in the area too. If we assume 1-5% of the local bees might be visiting the trees, there would have to be a colony density of ~10-50 colonies per km^2. That is high, but not impossible. Previous measurements of bumble bee colony density have estimated in the region of 0.5 to 20 per km^2 [1]. So, one of the following is probable: the number of bumble bees is exaggerated in the story, or they weren't all bumble bees, or some of my estimates are wrong. I would arrogantly assert the first two are more likely :) 1. https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/handle/1957/35082 https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/handle/1957/35082

andyl 13y ago

Numbers of bees in a hive grows and shrinks depending on the season and climate. Typical numbers might be 15-20K bees in winter, 60-80K bees in summer. Worker-Bee lifespan = ~2 months. All eggs laid by one queen!

Blahah 13y ago
Most of the bees were bumble bees (Bombus spp.), which have only hundreds of individuals in a hive. 25,000 honeybees could easily have been a single hive that died for any reason. 25,000 bumble bees is more alarming.

will_brown 13y ago

A least a starting point on Colony Collapse Disorder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

sageikosa 13y ago

A dead deer found on the side of the road in Pennsylvania has more biomass.

hnriot 13y ago
but not impact on future food supply.
- sageikosa 13y ago
  Since they were most likely killed by a pesticide, it's not an epidemic, and the remaining bees can make more, just like the remaining deer can make more, and the remaining rabbits can always make more rabbits.
sliverstorm 13y ago
Deer don't pollinate flowers.
- run4yourlives 13y ago
  If a deer walked though a field it would stand to reason that it would encourage pollination. Bees are some of the best pollinators, but they aren't exclusive in this regard.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Well, it's a good thing fruit grows at ground-level then, where deer can pollinate it.
    - run4yourlives 13y ago
      Actually, most of the things that honey bees are critical in pollinating grow closer to the ground.
- sageikosa 13y ago
  25000 bees are a minute fraction of the worldwide total. One deer is a minute fraction of the worldwide total, I'd assert their impact is on the same order of magnitude. Can we all stop examining local news and panicking globally? If you started finding lots of deer dead in the woods, I might be concerned; on the side of the road, not so much. If you started finding bees dead in their hive (which does happen, but not in this case), I might be concerned; finding them dead by bee toxic trees that have been recently sprayed with insecticide, not so much.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Can we all stop examining local news and panicking globally? Am I coming across as panicky? I don't really see that... I'm just pointing out that deer don't have the same keystone role in large ecosystems as major pollinators.

Blahah 13y ago

25,000 is a huge number because they were bumble bees, which exist in hives of hundreds of individuals (unlike honey bees, which can have tens of thousands). The story in a sentence is "Exterminators drench tree in mixed insecticide, kill thousands of insects from the tree and surrounding area". It has little to do with colony collapse disorder.

roc 13y ago
So something like every single bee in a couple hundred colonies flew out to a single pair of trees to be poisoned? Isn't that fairly odd behavior in and of itself? Wiki suggests bumble bees only range a few kilometers. Is it even normal to see that many colonies that close together?
- Blahah 13y ago
  I suspect the number is inflated - it's unlikely (but not impossible) that anyone counted all the bees. Estimating that number by eye could be off by an order of magnitude. Probably the tree and surrounding vegetation were flowering abundantly, attracting many insects from the area. I would say thousands of insects on a large tree is not unfeasible at all, perhaps even tens of thousands. Whether they were all bees, and whether the bees were really all bumble bees, is not clear. You're right that 25,000 bumble bees in one place does sound logistically difficult to arrange. We can back-of-the-envelope it... (edit: increased foraging distance with data from reference, which slightly changes the conclusion) It would be ~150 colonies within a several kilometer radius. If we assume mean foraging distance of 10km [1], thats (a rather beautiful) 314km^2 of source area. We should probably also assume that the vast majority of bees in the area are not visiting those two trees, as there are likely other good sources in the area too. If we assume 1-5% of the local bees might be visiting the trees, there would have to be a colony density of ~10-50 colonies per km^2. That is high, but not impossible. Previous measurements of bumble bee colony density have estimated in the region of 0.5 to 20 per km^2 [1]. So, one of the following is probable: the number of bumble bees is exaggerated in the story, or they weren't all bumble bees, or some of my estimates are wrong. I would arrogantly assert the first two are more likely :) 1. https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/handle/1957/35082 https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/handle/1957/35082