[HN Gopher] A cocktail of pesticides, parasites and hunger leave...
___________________________________________________________________
A cocktail of pesticides, parasites and hunger leaves bees down and
out
Author : lnyan
Score : 204 points
Date : 2021-08-06 07:09 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've never used pesticides or herbicides on my lawn for 20 years.
| When the flowers are out, there's a constant hum of bees.
|
| The bees never bother me, and I avoid bothering them.
|
| I had to get rid of a hornet's nest, though. They'd come after me
| like Me109s when I'd just walk by.
| neonihil wrote:
| I love how society is ignoring the bluntness of the situation.
|
| If bees go down, we go down.
|
| Simple as such. All of our food supply depends on flowering
| plants. Without the workforce to distribute pollen, no seeds will
| grow. Without seeds, no new plants will grow. Without new plants,
| we have nothing to eat. Nor does our meat stock.
|
| If I was to go dark, I'd say every problem contains it's own
| soliton...
| pfdietz wrote:
| > If bees go down, we go down.
|
| The great majority of crops are wind pollinated, not insect
| pollinated. So this is not entirely clear.
| neonihil wrote:
| You have a point. There are wind pollinated plants.
|
| It is not entirely clear though how effective the pollination
| would be for those plants without bees.
|
| But these crops do require bees. Coffee is one of them! Just
| saying.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated.
| ..
| pfdietz wrote:
| Why should bees have anything to do with wind pollinated
| plants? The plants are not optimized for attracting insects
| or depositing pollen on them. So, no, I don't think these
| plants require bees. Coffee has actual insect-attracting
| flowers and is clearly insect pollinated, unlike the major
| staple crops.
|
| From your link: "Most staple food grains, like corn, wheat,
| rice, soybean and sorghum, need no insect help at all; they
| are wind or self-pollinated."
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah that was a big thing a decade or so ago. Then it switched
| to global warming, then climate change. Old news don't make
| money, and that's what's important.
| lettergram wrote:
| I've been telling everyone I know. The number 1 concern we should
| all have are pesticides!
|
| The number of insects have dropped dramatically and that has
| impacts on the entire food chain. Particularly, the ability for
| plants to reproduce. The pesticides themselves also make it all
| the way up the food chain.
|
| Neonicotinoids have a half life of 5 years and we spray fields
| EVERY YEAR. So it's building up in the supply chain. I live
| surrounded by corn fields and I basically only see wasps,
| Japanese beetles and some ants. Growing up we saw a ton of
| different insect species and numbers.
|
| Finally, all these chemicals interact and frankly we have no idea
| of the long term impacts when combined.
| gizmondo wrote:
| > Neonicotinoids have a half life of 5 years and we spray
| fields EVERY YEAR. So it's building up in the supply chain.
|
| Have they been in use less than 10 years? Or are we increasing
| the usage every year? Otherwise your conclusion doesn't seem to
| follow.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Okay, so with a half-life of five years, whatever you spray
| at year zero, you get about 87.0551% left by next year.
|
| So, let's imagine we spray just one unit per year. Year zero,
| one unit. Farmer Brown shows up to do his usual one-unit
| blast, recommended by Monsanto, but 87% of the stuff is still
| there.
|
| Year two, 1.870551 units are present. Year three, 2.628408673
| units. Year four, 3.288162485. By year ten, you have
| 5.79376654 units present.
|
| If the half-life is really five years, you should do an
| initial one-unit dump, then just thirteen percent of that
| every subsequent year.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Presumably most of the pesticides get removed when the
| plants are harvested.
|
| Some probably are still around, but if spraying less
| worked, the farmers would because it would be cheaper.
|
| Not saying that pesticides aren't a problem, just saying
| that we're probably not just flooding our fields with more
| and more pesticides.
| sjwalter wrote:
| > the farmers would because it would be cheaper
|
| As a person who just became a farmer at the start of
| covid, I think this is a mistaken conclusion.
|
| Farmers are, in general, not out there a/b testing
| concentrations of herbicides or pesticides in their
| fields to find the exactly optimal level. If they're
| anything like most of the farmers I've met--who are
| absolutely really smart, well-intentioned folks--they
| talk to the guy at the extension office or weed control
| office and that guy tells them what to mix and how to
| apply.
|
| If it works, the farmer is generally happy. If not, he'll
| complain. The definition of "works" is: the immediate
| problem is solved. So the extension office guy, who
| usually seems to be indirectly funded by Dow Chemical in
| some way, or just by chance seems to really love that
| concern's range of products, is motivated to maybe
| overshoot a little.
|
| On my farm, we're doing things a little bit, uh,
| differently. Our food is expensive, but it's helping heal
| our soil and provides actual nutrition.
| https://mulligan.farm.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I don't think half-life means what you think it means. A
| substance with a half-life of five years will not be gone in
| ten years.
| gizmondo wrote:
| I know what it means, I was too lazy to do the math
| properly. The point was that with such a (relatively) short
| half-life the total amount stabilizes quickly.
| kbelder wrote:
| Once you've hit the balance, you'll have saturation equal
| to 1 + 4/5 + 16/25 + 64/125 ...
|
| It ends up summing to 5 (what a coincidence!). So 1 dose
| with a halflife of 5 years, applied yearly, hits
| equilibrium at 5x concentration.
| User23 wrote:
| I don't now where you live, but perhaps you're not looking very
| hard? Where I live the wild plants, which is to say weeds, are
| showing absolutely no problem reproducing whatsoever and when
| the clover blooms there are so many bees it's uncomfortable to
| be outside. And while I'm no entomologist, I see far more
| insect species than can be counted on both hands.
| lmilcin wrote:
| It is not just pesticides. We are killing all flowering plants
| around us that are not crops or garden flowers.
|
| Bees do not care whether it is a weed or crop. But they do care
| that there is always something flowering. When there is little
| variety in plants around bee nest they can't pollinate entire
| season but rather most of the time there is very little to
| pollinate and then suddenly there is too much and they can't
| keep up and make good use of it.
| manachar wrote:
| No. The point is the number 1 concern is we're destroying
| insect ecosystems to anthropoform the world.
|
| Pesticides are a problem, but almost always secondary to
| wholesale habitat destruction in order to make farmland (mostly
| to grow feed for cattle in this country) and suburbs.
| Pesticides are just a tool to make those new "more profitable"
| landscapes.
|
| Modern commercial farming leaves no room for nature, and
| suburbans folks seem to think ants and spiders shouldn't exist.
| Turns out the same things that kill "pests" and "weeds"
| generally make it tough for the cute things we like.
|
| We're reshaping the world, often in ignorance on how much we
| actually depend on these ecosystems we are destroying.
| harpersealtako wrote:
| In the developed world, total acres of farmland have been
| shrinking for about a half century. And in North America,
| suburbs are usually overpopulated with cute things (e.g.
| deer, squirrels, raccoons), not underpopulated.
|
| The issue IS pesticides. There is broad consensus that this
| is the case among experts. Harmful pesticide overutilization
| is a LOT more practical to fix than getting rid of farms and
| suburbs.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| If you buy organic, does that imply that the crops aren't
| treated with pesticides? What else can a layperson do?
| gizmondo wrote:
| No, there are organic pesticides. Some on them can be better
| (e.g. less stable) than some synthetic ones, that's all. And
| them being organic also guarantees that they can't be
| improved, in terms of stability or targeting, so that is
| entirely stupid.
| User23 wrote:
| As the name neonicotinoids implies, nicotine itself is a
| fairly effective natural pesticide. Subsistence farmers in
| the American Southeast used to dust their gardens with
| ground up tobacco. Probably some people still do.
| Y-bar wrote:
| > And them being organic also guarantees that they can't be
| improved
|
| Please explain this part.
|
| I was under the impression that certifications for
| "organic" labeling was a threshold thing and nothing
| prevents one brand from trying to be more efficient within
| limitations compared to another brand, as long as it is
| below or above certain levels.
| lathyrus_long wrote:
| The list of pesticides allowable in organic farming is
| (at least under OMRI rules) determined by naturalness,
| not safety. For example, pyrethrin occurs naturally in
| chrysanthemums, so it's allowed, even though it's highly
| toxic to bees. Tau-fluvalinate is a synthetic pyrethroid
| (pyrethrin analog), so it's forbidden, even though it's
| sufficiently nontoxic to bees that it's used as a
| miticide in commercial hives.
|
| Synthetic pesticides are designed and screened in the
| same way as small molecule drugs, a long and uncertain
| process that's still far easier than discovering a new
| natural product. At least in theory, these synthetic
| compounds can be optimized for whatever we want. It's
| just that absent regulation, the commercial incentive is
| for better short-term yield regardless of the ecological
| cost.
|
| One could imagine a certification similar to organic that
| forbids the most ecologically damaging practices--even if
| they're using natural products--and permits safer use of
| synthetic products. Probably a hard sell to consumers,
| though. I've occasionally seen produce marketed as "IPM"
| (integrated pest management), which isn't quite that but
| goes in that general direction.
| gizmondo wrote:
| I had in mind a relatively broad definition* from the
| latest Swiss public initiative on the topic. Which was
| forbidding any chemical alterations to the compounds
| already produced by plants, etc. Not really familiar with
| labeling requirements in the US.
|
| * intended by organizers, not spelled in the text.
| Y-bar wrote:
| I'm European and have not heard of something like what
| you are alluding to. I know certain specific categories
| of pesticides are either forbidden (e.g. Propargite), or
| limited. But given your response I still do not
| understand what it has to do with artificial limits of
| "organic" labeling of certain categories of compounds,
| especially since it is often NGO:s which are responsible
| for many of these labels and their verifications.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I know is possible to use genetic engineering to 'knock-out' a
| species by introducing some genes that cripple the females but
| allow the males to carry the bad gene forward through the rest
| of the population.
|
| Making species extinct on purpose sounds bad, but hear me out.
| What if we do the knock-out technique on the most economically
| destructive pests so that we no longer need broad insecticides?
| We should probably only do this to pests that exclusively feed
| on crops and not generalists. But there are a ton of
| specialized pests that feed on human agriculture.
|
| For instance, if you make the corn borer moth extinct in the
| wild, would you still need to spray cornfields? Or what about
| the Colorado Potato Beetle, the Boll Weevil, etc?
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| Outdoor farming is still incredibly resource intensive. As we
| move into an age where unsalted water becomes more precious
| and rare we should focus on hydroponic growing tech to
| preserve water. It is indoors so it wouldn't require
| pesticides.
| lathyrus_long wrote:
| Pesticides are still widely used indoors. Pests will get
| introduced even with strong precautions (air showers at the
| entrances, etc.). At that point, if they're able to
| multiply then they will, potentially even faster than
| outdoors since there are no natural predators. There also
| tends to be less airflow, which encourages pests like
| spider mites.
|
| Of course the greenhouse has advantages too--you can
| deliberately introduce beneficial (predatory) insects and
| they can't fly away, and if you do end up using pesticides
| then there's no risk to wild pollinators. For example, the
| EU banned certain neonics outdoors but still permits indoor
| use. It's more just different than strictly easier or
| harder.
| nradov wrote:
| Israeli farmers have shown that crops can be grown outdoors
| in a water efficient manner.
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| How have they done that? Encapsulating the soil with a
| barrier layer?
| lathyrus_long wrote:
| The Israelis invented modern drip irrigation and use it
| extensively. They also make good use of low-quality
| water, like treated wastewater and not-totally-
| desalinated seawater, by developing salt-tolerant
| varieties and carefully optimizing plant nutrition under
| their constraints.
|
| Of course they do lots of hydroponics too, for the usual
| hydroponic crops (tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.). The science
| in hydroponics and science in sophisticated soil culture
| aren't really that different--you'll see mostly the same
| chemical fertilizers, the same EC and pH measurements in
| the field, the same lab analyses by ICP, etc.
|
| Some water still drains to the aquifer and is "wasted".
| It needs to be though, or else unwanted ions (from impure
| source water or fertilizer, including but not limited to
| Na+ and Cl-) would accumulate and kill the plant. Israel
| has a significant problem with salinization of their
| soils and groundwater, and lots of interesting work
| modeling that.
| User23 wrote:
| I don't hate the idea of eradicating invasive pest species,
| but I do worry that the intervention might not work as
| intended.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I think the beauty of it is that we can keep an isolated
| unmodified population in a remote location and re-introduce
| them if need be. Not full extinction, just extinct-in-the-
| wild.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Not full extinction, just extinct-in-the-wild
|
| Or just "extinct where we grow crop X"
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| With how many insects there are of any species, there are
| bound to be many that have the genes to evade your genetic
| modification.
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| Since we bought our house, we're saturated in ads for pest
| control companies who want to spray our entire property to kill
| bugs. It's unbelievable that this is actually legal.
|
| I think that the use of pesticides should be strictly limited
| to acute infestations -- or small specific things like a
| barrier placed on the foundation of the house for termite
| prevention.
| handrous wrote:
| A time when cities had trucks drive around dousing entire
| _neighborhoods_ in pesticide is well within living memory.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| That's definitely still a thing in Michigan where I grew
| up. There are county departments dedicated to mosquito
| control.
| trophycase wrote:
| Yep, it's just lovely living in an apartment complex that
| sprays poison everywhere on the property every month.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > The number of insects have dropped dramatically
|
| Are you referring to the 2017 "Insect Apocalypse" paper? It has
| not done well under subsequent examination.
|
| https://ecologyisnotadirtyword.com/2019/12/20/moving-on-from...
|
| "From a scientific perspective, there is so much wrong with the
| paper, it really shouldn't have been published in its current
| form: the biased search method, the cherry-picked studies, the
| absence of any real quantitative data to back up the bizarre
| 40% extinction rate that appears in the abstract (we don't even
| have population data for 40% of the world's insect species),
| and the errors in the reference list. And it was presented as a
| 'comprehensive review' and a 'meta-analysis', even though it is
| neither."
| mandmandam wrote:
| Anyone with eyeballs can tell there are far far far far far
| fewer insects than there were thirty years ago. This isn't a
| fuddable topic.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'd prefer actual science, human memory is extremely
| unreliable and often tends to be self-serving.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| When does preference for "actual science" become
| satisfied, given we on HN skeptically pick apart all
| presented evidence of anything? The above is in Nature
| for goodness sakes, is that too weak of a journal? If so
| I'm weaker than a weak scientist who publishes there.
|
| I'd say entomologists should judge what is actually good
| science, the rest of us? We do have valid if flawed
| memories of more insects previously. Combined with the
| invasive species, widespread pesticide use, and all this
| evidence, I don't think it's wise to slow-walk our
| response to such a pivotal biological foundation's
| crisis.
|
| We slow walked cigarettes, millions died. We slow walked
| climate, and we're on a path of worst outcomes. Shall
| insects be another failure of humans to respond? When do
| the skeptical technicians lay down their doubtful
| instincts and push for change?
| staticassertion wrote:
| I think it's OK to say "hey we need to really think about
| our usage of pesticides" and less ok to say "anyone with
| eyeballs can tell".
|
| I don't recall there being more/ less insects at any
| given point in my life, I haven't noticed anything at all
| in that regard. I'm completely willing to believe that
| insecticide use is bad and that there are less insects,
| fwiw.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| I think this is interesting because it's such a common
| issue on this board.
|
| You can tell when people are requesting evidence to shut
| down a discussion vs. to broaden a discussion by the way
| they reply - if they bring in their own counter evidence
| and address the points being raised they're probably
| engaging in good faith and using evidence to find nuance.
| [deleted]
| pfdietz wrote:
| "Anyone with eyeballs" is clearly below the threshold.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ruined wrote:
| we're soaked. rain was in the forecast. i say it's really
| coming down out here, you tell me to wait for the inches
| measured at seatac
| rootusrootus wrote:
| If you want to make policy based on the rain, yeah, I'd
| prefer to wait for it. Otherwise your 'really coming down
| out here' might be my 'light drizzle.' Especially if
| you've ever lived in the midwest.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| Okay, go nuts:
|
| More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total
| flying insect biomass in protected areas https://journals
| .plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I've read it. There has been a huge backlash over that
| paper, from actual scientists critical of the methodology
| and conclusions. They make a compelling case that this
| one particular study should be taken with a grain of
| salt.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| All of the backlash I've seen over the paper has to do
| with the precision and effect sizes measured - I haven't
| seen an argument, let alone a credible argument, that the
| effect itself is not real.
|
| Follow-up research has confirmed that the effect is real
| and significant: Arthropod decline in grasslands and
| forests is associated with landscape-level drivers
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1684-3
|
| The follow-up indicates that the effect sizes are
| greatest for agricultural areas.
| sjwalter wrote:
| This is hilarious. "Actual science", presumably meaning,
| "peer reviewed paper".
|
| Science is not some elitist endeavor. It is available to
| all of us, to observe the world around us and form
| hypotheses and discuss them and test them, if we're
| motivated and it's possible.
|
| This attitude is so, so bizarre. You won't believe the
| changes in the world around you, easily observed, are
| even happening unless there's "Science The Meme" being
| done about it.
|
| This short youtube video succinctly explains the problem
| with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqEhPFIlH3U
| zhynn wrote:
| Another datapoint is dead-bugs-on-windshield. It's so many
| fewer than there used to be.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| There are confounding factors for this observation.
|
| Many insects move very little (like dozens or hundreds of
| yards) over the course of their lives and increased salt
| usage has increased the number of roads with seriously
| disturbed ecosystems along side them and width of said
| disturbed areas.
|
| I'm not saying pesticides aren't the cause or aren't part
| of the cause but roads have all sorts of other terrible
| stuff that can decimate insect populations going on. The
| sooner we switch to beet juice the better.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Another confounding factor is requirements for increasing
| gas mileage. One way to do that is reduce wind
| resistance, which could mean a more sloped windshield
| with less turbulent airflow. Insects could just be
| diverted more effectively now without striking the
| windshield.
| drran wrote:
| Old cars are still on the road. Even very old ones.
| [deleted]
| handrous wrote:
| Owned a sleek and sporty (styled, anyway) '98 sedan,
| around the turn of the millennium. Just as with my
| parents' cars in the 80s and 90s, the windshield got
| splattered all the time. Had to clean it on road trips.
|
| Owned a far less-sleek '01 minivan... from like 2015 on,
| not when it was new. Near-zero "ew" bug impacts, even on
| road trips. I'm not sure I _ever_ cleaned the windshield
| at a gas pump, which used to be routine.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| This was clear within weeks after publishing it. Years later
| it's still cited or paraphrased in every article about bees
| or other flying insects. Sigh.
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| No. He's referring to direct observation.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| I was at an exhibition in Toronto, Ontario over 10 years ago and
| almost jumped out of my skin when I heard a beekeeper casually
| exclaim that "wild bees don't exist in Ontario any more".
|
| I pressed her on it and she said that sure some do still exist
| but hardly enough to really do any pollinating of much of
| anything.
|
| I used to see honeybees all the time growing up. Been bit by
| plenty.
|
| Now I am hard pressed to find a single one if I look.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Honeybees are _never_ really "wild" in Ontario. They're a
| European / Asian species. I don't think they naturalize well
| here, nor should they, they're invasive if they do. I am sure
| there's the odd wild colony here and there, but I doubt they
| last long.
|
| That said, there's honeybees all over my farm right now
| (Hamilton area) going crazy on my cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins
| and zucchinis. And they're not mine, I don't keep them, and I
| don't know of any neighbours here who do.
|
| Earlier in the year it was bumblebees (oh they're so cute!) but
| right now just lots and lots of honeybees.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| Well that's a relief!
|
| Maybe I've just spent too long in the city!
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I remember seeing a segment by David Suzuki I think about
| how bee populations are actually healthier in some respects
| inside urban areas than they are in many rural areas, due
| to the spread of large scale monocrop cash crop
| agriculture. Backyards in urban areas combined with parks
| are in some ways more diverse than a lot of the
| midwest/great lakes cash cropped region at this point :-(
| [deleted]
| lostlogin wrote:
| Feral colonies tend to die out within the season where I am
| (New Zealand). The mite load gets too high without treatment,
| and it causes a crash. Seeing an untreated hive in late
| autumn is very depressing. I've nursed one of mine back to
| health this winter, after treating it just like the rest, but
| finding roughly 100 mites per cup of bees (approximately 250
| bees). I treat once it passes 3 per cup of bees.
|
| Once you get numbers that high, bees with deformed wing virus
| are stumbling about. Dead, starved bees can be seen in cells
| and mites can be seen running about. The larvae are dying
| from starvation or cold due to there being too few nurse
| bees. Wasps and other bees are robbing the weak hive and
| debris is all over the floor. It's horrible to find but
| satisfying to fix (when you can).
| blackgirldev wrote:
| I am amazed at the imagery of humans as invasive destroyers of
| the earth. There is nothing more depressing than the knowledge of
| our killing everything in a literal war against other species
| with bees as collateral damage.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Well shit now I'm depressed.
| sltkr wrote:
| Interestingly, Quillette published an article last week,
| suggesting that the concerns about the insect crisis are
| overblown:
|
| https://quillette.com/2021/07/25/the-insect-apocalypse-that-...
|
| They cite many decent sources that seem to corroborate this,
| though none as respectable as Nature.
|
| What's interesting about the Nature news article is that it very
| carefully avoids making any definite claims of what is going to
| happen if things stay the same. The author points out that
| pollinators are important to the ecosystem (true, of course) and
| that they're "under threat", which seems intended to imply that
| the stability of the ecosystem itself is under threat. But no
| explicit claims about the impact of on the ecosystem at large are
| actually made in the article.
|
| As a layman, I'm not sure what to make of this. At this stage, it
| seems like these studies are mostly of interest to researchers,
| and there is no real need for the general public to worry about
| "A World Without Bees", yet that's probably going to be the
| popular interpretation anyway.
| greyivy wrote:
| The Quillette itself has quite the reputation of being an
| untrustworthy source. The article may be well cited, but I'd
| caution anyone reading this to think critically and do your own
| research (on the topic and The Quillette).
| bjt wrote:
| The Media Bias Chart puts Quillette at about the same level
| of reliability as FiveThirtyEight. A bit higher than CNN. A
| bit lower than The Atlantic.
|
| https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
| sltkr wrote:
| How did you determine that Quillette is an untrustworthy
| source? If you want to convince people, you have to give
| arguments, not just make statements of facts without anything
| to back them up.
|
| Personally I don't consider Quillette a source of unbiased
| truth. Articles are typically written by a single author that
| has biases of their own, and the quality of argumentation and
| reputability of references cited varies greatly. Despite
| that, I feel like it's useful to read about counterpoints to
| popular narratives. This helps separate out the beliefs that
| people agree on and the ones that are in dispute.
|
| For example, on the topic of insect extinction, it seems like
| both sides agree that: - Habitat destruction
| reduces the prevalence of pollinators in human maintained
| land. - No species of bee is at risk of going extinct.
|
| It's telling that my comment was downvoted without any
| comment explaining what was wrong or bad about it. That
| confirms to me that people want to believe certain narratives
| in spite of available evidence, and it shows why alternative
| media like Quillette are absolutely crucial to allow unbiased
| people to inform themselves on both sides of the issues
| before forming a conclusion.
| jfjsjcjdjejcosi wrote:
| > Managed high-density bee colonies for crop pollination are
| associated with these pollinators being at risk of disease and
| parasite infection
|
| I think, unfortunately, when most people hear about bees being at
| risk, they think only of domestic honey bees (which are not at
| risk). A lot of the solutions proposed to "save the bees" are
| therefore counterproductive.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Every few months I briefly entertain the idea of keeping honey
| bees here at our small farm. And then I start reading through
| all the start-up material and read about it and quickly become
| unconvinced of the idea. I would rather support our native
| pollinating insects.
|
| Too many pest problems. Too much labour. And I always come to
| the conclusion: I'd rather encourage native pollinators for our
| area. Honey is a neat crop, but not necessary and not something
| I suspect I could make money from anyways.
|
| So yeah, for me it's now becoming: how I can I create more
| habitat for my native bees and protect them from the cash crop
| agriculture that's on both sides of me?
| njarboe wrote:
| I wonder how much of the decrease in native bees is due to
| the trend of people keeping honey bees. Flowers have only so
| much nectar and pollen. A honey bees could be consuming most
| of the available food for miles from the hive. I have never
| seen this possibility mentioned. Most people thinking of
| getting a single hobby hive, I get the feeling, are generally
| nature loving people. I would guess that if they knew that
| their hive would decimate the local native flower visiting
| insect population they would not want one.
| afandian wrote:
| Install things resembling 'bee hotels' everywhere you can.
| Very low cost, potentially might be of great benefit. I was
| very surprised to see a few solitary bees using the ones that
| we put in our garden.
|
| Then plant a patch of bee-friendly plants, like wildflowers
| and clover.
|
| Also, you don't _need_ to take the honey from a beehive. I
| don 't, I just keep them because I like honeybees. Doesn't
| reduce all of your upkeep concerns, but does decouple it from
| needing to achieve an outcome, which can take reduce some
| mental stress.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| For sure, right now outside it's bee heaven because I have
| a lot of cucurbits in flower all over the gardens (uh,
| anybody want cucumbers and pumpkins? Crap.) And there's a
| lot of comfrey which has gone crazy all over my farm and
| the bees seem to really be into that as it pretty
| consistently flowers over the whole summer.
|
| Around this time of year I put buckwheat in as a cover
| crop, that way it flowers right before frost and then dies
| back before I plant garlic. When there's a field of
| buckwheat in flower it's absolutely mental how busy the
| insects are.
| whichquestion wrote:
| The bee hotels we have typically attract non-native mason
| bees which are later parasitized by parasitoid wasps. It
| may be better to encourage plants that have pithy stems and
| leave them over winter (if you are in area with winter) so
| that bees can use them to nest.
|
| Planting wildflowers with genetics native to your region is
| among the best things you can do to support pollinators.
| quercusa wrote:
| We had one of those bee hotels up. It turned out to be a
| buffet for the parasitoid wasps. There seems to a reason
| that mason bees, etc. are called 'solitary'.
|
| We've currently got Mountain Mint ( _Pycnanthemum
| muticum_ ) and Joe Pye weed ( _Eutrochium dubium 'Little
| Joe'_) blooming. They are covered in honeybees and all
| kinds of others I've never seen before.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Also, you don't need to take the honey from a beehive.
|
| How do you manage this? Done they run out of space and
| swarm? I have one that I took 7 boxes from (somewhere
| around 100kgs of honey) and I also split it during the
| season to stop them swarming - they grew so fast. If I
| hadn't there would have been swarms every few weeks.
| bserge wrote:
| I dunno what you're reading. Or maybe it's your location.
|
| I've got friends who make a good profit selling honey from
| their remote plots of land, going there a couple times a
| month.
|
| They say it's a great side business and the bees do all the
| work.
|
| And indeed, from what I've seen it's just a bunch of old
| school wooden hives in the middle of an unkept field.
| nend wrote:
| As a relatively new first time home buyer, I've found lawn
| care to be awful. Maintaining one actively harms the local
| ecosystem by removing native plants and replacing it with a
| monoculture, non-flowering, invasive, water intensive grass
| that isn't even allowed to grow to full height (in many
| cases).
|
| I've started a plan to overtime dig up the yard and replace
| it with flower beds/gardens with native plants. The first bed
| I did this spring, and the native bushes I planted are now
| flowering. I've never seen a small garden attract so many
| pollinators: honey bees, bumble bees, pollinating flies,
| solitary wasps. It was really rewarding seeing all the
| different insects/species being supported by them.
|
| Plus the bushes look great and require almost no maintenance
| for their care once planted (some weeding throughout the
| summer, and mulching every couple years probably).
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Having 6.5 acres I just cannot avoid grass. The alternative
| to grass is labour. I already have too many gardens (half
| of my property is wooded tho so that's ok). But I have no
| interest in "lawns". I just "let" a lot of clover, creeping
| charlie, plantain etc grow. Or rather, I make no effort to
| maintain it other than mow. So I just try to be strategic
| about when I mow to avoid toad and bee death.
| mattwdelong wrote:
| Have you thought about meadow mixes with native
| beneficial flowering plants [1]? There is some planning
| and expense to get it established, but once established
| your only maintenance is cutting it down once a year. In
| the long run it'll save you significant time.
|
| [1] https://www.ernstseed.com/product-category/uplands-
| meadows/
| jschwartzi wrote:
| I've looked into this myself and you should be careful
| planting "meadow mix." Make sure the listed seeds are not
| invasive species. Otherwise you'll potentially be
| introducing noxious weeds into your yard.
|
| https://www.washington.edu/news/2002/04/18/wildflower-
| seed-m...
| adrianN wrote:
| A meadow that is mowed once or twice a year can harbor a
| large variety of species and look really nice too. The
| problem are monoculture lawns, not grass.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| In my climate (great lakes region) mowing only twice a
| year results in waste high plants full of ticks and
| sumacs growing up where I don't want them.
|
| So I mow the front area and common areas about once every
| week and a half during peak growing season, and bush hog
| the back field about once every month and a half making
| an attempt to mow around things like milkweed and
| beneficial flowering plants.
| wins32767 wrote:
| If you don't mow for long enough, you'll end up with more
| woods. =)
| dghughes wrote:
| The weird thing is many people don't know that the European
| honeybee the only bee we humans get honey from is an invasive
| species in the Americas.
| nradov wrote:
| Humans in Africa also get honey from native bees there.
| akiselev wrote:
| The European honeybee isn't even the only domesticated
| honeybee. There are also wild honeybees that produce honey,
| like the Himalayan giant honey bee, though it's quite a bit
| more expensive. IIRC there are eight honeybee species and
| dozens of subspecies
| malikNF wrote:
| I came across a video[1] where Paul Stamets and Steve Sheppard
| were experimenting on ways to save bees using mushrooms. Wonder
| how much effort it would take to implement it worldwide or if its
| even practical to implement on a world scale.
|
| [1]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_lqIUlON1s (5.38mins)
| filoeleven wrote:
| This is worth promoting, because lots of folks don't know about
| it yet. Beekeepers take note! This video is also MUCH shorter
| than Stamets' own talks, so if you want more details a search
| on "Paul Stamets bees" will get you more statistics.
|
| The results appear to be fantastic at preventing colony
| collapse disorder. And the hypothesis for why it works is just
| complex enough to make sense in an ecosystem: varroa mites
| aren't directly killing bees, but due to pesticide use the bees
| are more vulnerable to the viruses/infections that the
| parasitic mites carry. Bees seek out certain fungus mycelium to
| lick in order to get access to their antiviral and
| antibacterial properties. Stamets' solution (literally) is to
| put a small amount of those harvested chemicals into the sugar
| water that beekeepers feed their hives.
|
| As for practicality, growing mushrooms is very very easy to do
| at scale for many known species, IIRC this includes most if not
| all of the species Stamets has found to be beneficial.
|
| My only qualm is that it cannot address the threat of
| extinction to our US native and solitary bee species. So I
| think it could be a necessary but not sufficient step if
| keeping native pollinators extant is a goal.
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