[HN Gopher] Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of api...
___________________________________________________________________
Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture
Author : fortran77
Score : 55 points
Date : 2023-08-22 16:21 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| giantg2 wrote:
| Very interesting read, even for someone who has some exposure to
| these ideas as a beekeeper. A lot of it really comes down to
| personal theories and opinions.
|
| I keep my bees as "treatment-free". I don't treat for mites. I
| haven't had anything like AFB, but that would require drastic
| measures. I leave on plenty of honey for the bees and try not to
| feed at all. I use foundationless frames. I want to have
| "survivor" stock, but that might take a few more years.
|
| The average colony loss in the US is around 50% last time I
| looked. It seems most people have good years and bad years
| regardless of the management. I've had years when all, or nearly
| all, hives have survived. I've also had years where all, or
| nearly all, had died.
| cryptonector wrote:
| I highly recommend Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for
| Honeybee Health, by Les Crowder.
|
| My bees are treatment-free and going strong, and we'll be
| converting all of our Langstroth hives to top-bar hives this
| coming Spring.
|
| Basically, honeybee hives with mite treatment have high failure
| rates, and honeybee hives with no chemical treatments do better
| when the bees have been bred for mite resistance, so do the
| latter.
|
| As for top-bar hives vs. Langstroth, it's nigh impossible to keep
| from killing bees with Langstroth hives every time you get into
| them, and that's what makes them sting. Besides wanting a better
| relationship with the bees, it feels real bad to kill any, so why
| do it? Langstroth hives are only advantageous for large-scale
| commercial beekeeping (because the "supers" stack, and because
| the frames fit neatly in honey extractors), but in every other
| way Langstroth hives are just awful.
| voisin wrote:
| I am new to beekeeping this year and just trying to build my
| colonies up from the nucs I received. I have not done mite
| checks as I don't want to kill a cup of bees every few weeks
| just to do the check, and a shocking number of beekeepers I've
| met have mentioned that they lost entire colonies as soon as
| they treated for mites. I desperately want to be treatment-free
| - if I pick up that book would the lessons be applicable if I
| stuck with Langstroth hive bodies?
| cryptonector wrote:
| Starting from nucs is hard work. I also wouldn't bother
| testing for mites because killing a few hundred bees from a
| very weak colony is not really a good idea. Also, be very
| careful not to expose bees -especially young nurse bees,
| which don't fly yet- to the hot summer Sun -- I once killed
| hundreds more bees that way than I'd needed to for a mite
| test.
|
| > I desperately want to be treatment-free - if I pick up that
| book would the lessons be applicable if I stuck with
| Langstroth hive bodies?
|
| Yes!, yes quite!
| psychphysic wrote:
| No of course not. Paywalled article so just guessing.
| thebears5454 wrote:
| The real headline could be more accurately put as "Is modern
| amateur/hobbiest beekeeping making bee's genetically weaker?"
|
| "None of us knew at the time how strong the selection would be
| in the wild," Seeley told me recently. "It turned out that the
| bees had the variation needed to develop the traits to resist
| the mites." While beekeepers were experimenting with chemical
| treatments and hive designs, the bees in the forest were
| changing genetically. Their life styles helped them, too.
| "Colonies living in the wild have many things going for them,"
| Seeley said. The bees lived in smaller groups, relatively far
| apart, which made it harder for varroa to spread. They swarmed
| every year, which broke the reproductive cycle of the mites.
| (If a colony swarms, the nest is left without bee larvae, which
| is where varroa mites take hold.)"
|
| Heres a small snippet that briefly explains some of the things
| some Beekeepers think amateur beekeepers do incorrectly.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > Heres a small snippet that briefly explains some of the
| things some Beekeepers think amateur beekeepers do
| incorrectly.
|
| Not just amateurs. Professionals too.
| psychphysic wrote:
| That makes more sense, but the answer is still of course not.
|
| It's not like beekeepers keep their hives significantly
| overlap with where wild bees live.
| Lacerda69 wrote:
| As always with these kinds of headlines the answer is no.
|
| Humans live in a symbiotic relationship with bees, we can not
| exist without each other.
| hagbarth wrote:
| That seems untrue. If nothing else due to the fact that bees
| existed for 10s of millions of years before humans did.
| lopis wrote:
| What do you mean? We can live without bees from bee-keeping
| just fine. That's like saying cows and us can't live without
| each other.
| bnt wrote:
| Uhm are you gonna run around fields chasing wild cows for
| milk and burgers?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| sure - but the current number of cattle in the world would be
| unsustainable without human care and need for them.
|
| on edit: fixed grammar
| bborud wrote:
| Not quite. Much of the industry for growing fruit depends on
| beekeepers renting out their bees as pollinators. As for
| cattle, well, yeah, they wholly depend on us. If you are in
| doubt just look at the relative sizes of populations of
| cattle vs mammalian wildlife.
| lopis wrote:
| Yes, cattle depends on us, but we definitely don't depend
| on them; that was the point I was trying to make.
| defrost wrote:
| Oh, really?
|
| How do you explain wild feral cattle thriving in the
| Kimberley, Arnhem Land, etc. then?
|
| https://news.csu.edu.au/feature/are-feral-cattle-the-
| brumbie...
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/offtrack/the-
| banteng-...
|
| http://www.windyhills.com.au/wild-cattle/
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Our current civilization certainly seems to score very high on
| neuroticism.
|
| 50 years from now, people will label the Zeistgeist as a
| resurgence of old Victorianism, with different (in direction,
| not in kind) racial and sexual taboos and an extra dollop of
| hairshirt environmentalism.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Was there anything but neuroticism in non hunter gatherer
| societies?
| dvh wrote:
| I think bees can easily live without humans, they would just
| became another insignificant species like many others, say for
| example, like Alburnoides Bipunctatus. Wait, why did I picked
| that one? What's so special about it that I picked it? Nothing,
| that's why I picked it.
| pvaldes wrote:
| (second word in lowercase please: Alburnoides bipunctatus).
|
| In any case some species are key species and have more impact
| on ecosystems than other.
| spookie wrote:
| That's true, but I do agree in part that we've a pretty good
| relationship with bees. And, any beekeeper will respect the
| bees and only take what's needed without making their life
| harder.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Beekeper extracts almost all honey and replaces it with
| sugar. Because sugar is cheap and bees survive with sugar.
|
| Edited typo
| cryptonector wrote:
| Not I! Sugar water is terrible for the bees. If you want
| strong colonies that over-winter fine and bounce back
| fast in the Spring to make lots of honey, then you'd best
| leave them plenty of honey to make it through the winter.
| I only extract half of what I harvest (freezing that
| which I don't extract so I can give it back later if the
| colonies need it), and I leave a fair bit in the hives
| too.
|
| Don't buy commercial honey. Buy local, small- and medium-
| batch honey.
| spookie wrote:
| Well then, I'm sorry for my limited knowledge of
| artisinal beekeepers. That does make sense for bigger
| ones.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > Beekeper extracts almost all bee and replaces it with
| sugar
|
| If you mean that the larvae combs are removed and
| replaced by sugar... most probably not. The idea is
| having as much bees by beehive as you can breed.
|
| If you mean that beekeepers remove "almost all" honey
| leaving bees to starve, this is an oversimplification.
| Any professional beekeeper know that will need to leave
| enough honey for winter. Leaving a minimum of 12-15 Kg of
| honey is standard and should suffice for the bees. If the
| beehive looks weak may not be harvested at all. Sugar is
| provided if needed as winter emergency feeding. The
| beekeeper will feed the bees in autumn also to assure
| that the fall born bees are as strong as fatty as
| possible.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > If you mean that the larvae combs are removed and
| replaced by sugar... most probably not. The idea is
| having as much bees by beehive as you can breed.
|
| GP almost certainly meant that beekeepers take all the
| honey then they feed the bees sugar-water. That actually
| is true of some (many?) beekeepers.
| pvaldes wrote:
| It depends strongly on location. Winter bees live on
| autumn fat. If the bees are well feed in fall and the
| winters are warm, will need much less honey to survive.
| The beehive will not be required to be warmed against
| chilling temperatures for example so bees don't need to
| spend so much energy warming it
| cryptonector wrote:
| For sure. Where we are we have mild winters.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Ah, yet another reminder to never ever read articles when the
| headline contains a question mark.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > As always with these kinds of headlines the answer is no.
|
| The article is making the case that the answer is Yes. It goes
| over the reasons why the current way of Beekeeping
| (predominately for harvesting their honey) could be bad for
| bees and explains methods that the 'natural beekeepers' are
| using to make their pollination role more sustainable.
|
| From the article:
|
| > Most beekeepers' colonies are much larger than those which
| occur in the wild, and rival colonies might be separated by
| only a few yards, rather than by half a mile. Much of the bees'
| honey, which is supposed to get them through the winter, is
| taken before they have a chance to eat it. A queen bee goes on
| a spree of mating flights early in her life, and then lays the
| fertilized eggs until her death. In apiaries, queens often have
| their wings clipped, to interrupt swarming (a colony's natural
| form of reproduction), and are routinely inspected, and
| replaced by newcomers, sometimes imported from the other side
| of the world. Propolis--a wonderful, sticky substance that bees
| make from tree resin and that has antibacterial qualities--is
| typically scraped out of hives by beekeepers because it is
| annoying and hard to get off their hands.
|
| > Natural beekeepers leave their bees alone. They seldom treat
| for disease--allowing the weaker colonies to fail--and they
| raise the survivors in conditions that are as close as possible
| to tree cavities. They fill their hives with swarms that come
| in on the wing, rather than those which come from dealers who
| trade on the Internet.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > > In apiaries, queens often have their wings clipped, to
| interrupt swarming
|
| This is nonsense. Beekeepers like to do "splits" (simulated
| swarming) because it increases the number of hives they have
| (and if they have too many, they can sell them), and mated
| queens don't and can't fly far unless the colony prepares her
| for swarming by making her lose weight for a couple of weeks
| before swarming.
|
| > > and are routinely inspected, and replaced by newcomers,
| sometimes imported from the other side of the world.
|
| This is true. Well, the queens themselves don't get
| "inspected" so much as the whole colony, because the
| beekeeper wants to see the queen laying lots. Re-queening is
| very much a thing, and quite frequent too.
|
| > > Propolis--a wonderful, sticky substance that bees make
| from tree resin and that has antibacterial qualities--is
| typically scraped out of hives by beekeepers because it is
| annoying and hard to get off their hands.
|
| I never scrape off propolis (which really is wonderful), and
| all beekeepers really should not scrape it off. But it's
| generally understood that propolis is very good. Indeed,
| there are beekeepers who stimulate production of propolis to
| harvest and sell it (you can definitely find propolis
| products out there), but only ignorant ones scrape it of
| because it's annoying.
|
| > > Natural beekeepers leave their bees alone. They seldom
| treat for disease--allowing the weaker colonies to fail--and
| they raise the survivors in conditions that are as close as
| possible to tree cavities. They fill their hives with swarms
| that come in on the wing, rather than those which come from
| dealers who trade on the Internet.
|
| True! Except that catching swarms is no guarantee that those
| are not "from dealers who trade on the Internet" (oh noes,
| not the Iinnnternet! and dealers!!). I've bought queens "on
| the Internet", though not from dealers but from beekeepers
| who do queen rearing. The problem with those queens is that
| they're often not very good, possibly because the larvae used
| for the grafts was too old, or because they didn't get enough
| chances to mate, or because of in-breeding.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > replaced by newcomers, sometimes imported from the other
| side of the world
|
| Depending on how you view it that bit is actually wrong. You
| are specifically NOT ALLOWED to ship bees between e.g. Europe
| and North America. I think you can send sperm and maybe eggs
| (not sure if that's possible).
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Technically they were correct - the US can import from New
| Zealand, but yes its quite protected: https://www.aphis.usd
| a.gov/aphis/ourfocus/planthealth/import...
|
| Germplasm (which I think is used to artificially inseminate
| queens) does seem less restricted:
|
| https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/planthealth/impor
| t...
| cryptonector wrote:
| Yes, but the "from the other side of the world" stock is
| already here.
| primax wrote:
| Also hives can (and do) abscond and go feral from the
| beekeepers hives any time they wish. They stay because the
| conditions are good.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Basically this. Colonies stay for the room and occasional
| board, as well as all the flowers that beekeepers typically
| plant in the hopes of making their bees productive.
|
| Colonies do abscond, absolutely, and there's lots of feral
| honeybee colonies out there.
| Lacerda69 wrote:
| Ok maybe its just a mutually very benificial relationship
| and we could survive without each other; but it's nicer
| together.
| ehnto wrote:
| I would be focusing on other types of farming long before I
| worried much about beekeeping. It's a wild stretch to consider it
| harmful for bees, and if the planet is to survive we should
| probably do all we can to keep them around.
|
| You could argue that you are benefiting from them still I
| suppose, but we all benefit from bees pollinating even if they
| are wild bees. We are still part of the ecosystem, we can't
| remove ourselves entirely (even though we seem determined not to
| make it through The Great Filter
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter)
| londons_explore wrote:
| In a way, beekeeping is stealing nectar from wild bees.
|
| I pretty much never see wild bees in my garden anymore - they're
| all honey bees, and usually some human is keeping/farming them -
| effectively stealing nectar from my garden and that of thousands
| of my neighbours that we had left out for wild animals.
| cryptonector wrote:
| I have every kind of wild local pollinator on my flowers as
| well my honeybees: wild solitary bees, wasps, butterflies, and
| hummingbird moths.
| mrweasel wrote:
| This is completely anecdotally but keeping honey bees in my
| garden appeared to attract a large number of wild bees, like
| bumblebees, ground nesting and solitary bees. Part of it might
| be that I've attempted to great an good environment for my own
| bees, part of it might also simply be that I notice bees a lot
| more.
|
| Commercial beekeepers are a different story, but they mostly
| place their apiaries in areas where wild bees couldn't possibly
| manage to cover the entire area anyway, like fields.
|
| One issue that might be at play in your case is that types of
| bees beekeepers normally keep are way better at dealing with
| pesticides, as compared to bumblebees and solitary bees. Your
| neighbors might be going a bit heavy on the spraying and some
| might actively be destroying the nests of ground nesting bees
| out of fear. For a few weeks each year my sidewalk is alive
| with ground nesting bees, while just a few meters away
| everything is fuck dead, because a stupid neighbor is allergic
| to bees and wasp and assumes that every bee is going to kill
| him (he doesn't keep an epi-pen so I question the seriousness
| of his affliction), so he sprays pretty much all sidewalks
| around here, except mine.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| _Stealing_ is a weird choice of words. Do you steal the oxygen
| that you breathe, or the water that you drink ? For it to reach
| your tap, it has been stolen by some fish 's lake
| Modified3019 wrote:
| The nectar and pollen that flowers produce is in fact a
| limited resource, both in quantity and in time available.
|
| Honeybees have the capability of depleting such resources
| because they are far more active than they actually need to
| be, which is one of the reasons we use them for crops with
| very high densities of flowers, like blueberries. They are
| efficient and thorough enough to get the job done.
|
| There are times of the year (in particular, late summer/fall)
| where good flowers are especially hard to come by, and so
| solitary bees can have trouble trying to compete against a
| hive in the area when they are trying to gather the resources
| they need to reproduce. Meanwhile a hive also has honey
| stored so dips in availability during the year matter much
| less.
| funcantor wrote:
| Sir, please stop stealing my internet
| Tagbert wrote:
| "stealing the nectar" is more like saying that you are
| stealing the webpages of websites.
| blueflow wrote:
| Wait until they realize bees do all that work without a
| profit incentive!
| mmmmmmtoes wrote:
| They do?
| distances wrote:
| The parent has a point, though I never thought about it that
| way. In a way a similar case would be if you had a squad of
| squirrels that gather seeds and nuts from your neighbour's
| gardens, and you would then take and sell the bounty that
| they bring back.
| mike_richards wrote:
| If the bees are in a man made hive they need you to remove
| honey so that they have room to lay. If you don't they will
| leave and not all of that honey is going with them.
| distances wrote:
| The neighbour example is about wild critters getting the
| harvest from your own yard vs. your neighbour running a
| farming operation and keeping the proceeds.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Eh, it's not quite that simple.
|
| Honeybees produce more honey than they need for several
| reasons, mainly that a) they are natural hoarders, b)
| we've bred them to hoard even more.
|
| It's true that colonies can become pollen-bound and/or
| nectar-/honey-bound, and thus have too little space for
| brood. When this happens it's very likely that the colony
| will swarm off, leaving behind as few as 20% or so of the
| bees behind, as well as and swarm cells from which one
| victorious queen will emerge, and then the rump colony
| will have plenty of honey while it's weak and recovering
| its numbers. During that time they'll consume whatever it
| was they had too much of and thus make room for brood.
| mike_richards wrote:
| Yes, and you will have happy neighbors... I do understand
| that the natural reproduction cycle isn't quite that
| simple. However for "normal" operation some removal is
| beneficial and not "stealing", so long as they have
| adequate supplies.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Not only that, but what beekeepers do is give the colony
| more room as it fills the hive with honey. The bees don't
| realize they have enough and just gather more and more,
| thus ending up with a large surplus that the beekeeper is
| happy to harvest.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| Interesting, I only ever see wild solitary bees in my (UK)
| garden.
| meerita wrote:
| And bees steal the polen and the nectar from flowers.
| will5421 wrote:
| Bees steal nectar, not pollen, but in exchange the flower
| reproduces
| Faaak wrote:
| Bees "steal" nectar (sugar) AND pollen (protein) :-)
| cryptonector wrote:
| Pollen also has fats. Bees very much need some of those
| fats. I recently saw a presentation on a paper about bee
| diets where they tested honeybee pollen preferences, and
| they tend to like pollens with omega-3-rich fats, up to
| 25% or so.
| pvaldes wrote:
| People take honey, but in exchange bees receive a few
| things
|
| 1) Pillbox Housing. Expensive beehive, made from metal and
| wood, and with only a few narrow entries easy to defend.
|
| 2) Comfort. In a quiet sunny place without loud music or
| sounds. A lid protecting from rain and storms and walls
| able to stand winds guarantee a dry and warm inner area. A
| lot of clean wax combs ready to be occupied with minimum
| effort and a structure to put each comb apart exactly how
| bees like it.
|
| 3) Free medical care. Provided by the species with the most
| advanced medicine known in the universe.
|
| 4) Free emergency help. Including extra food rations in
| winter and beehive rescue in case of wildfire or flood
|
| 5) Bodyguard services. Anti bear stone walls, Anti-wasp
| electric fences and Bee-eater deterrents if needed. Banners
| against human trespassers and regulation discouraging
| thieves.
|
| 8) Holidays. Free vehicle transport to visit fields in
| bloom exactly in the be-est touristic season.
|
| 9) Dating services at intercontinental level
|
| 10) All you can eat buffet. Gardens designed specifically
| and seeded with the best international selection of premium
| nectar.
|
| 11) Water sources and ponds to drink
| lukas099 wrote:
| I think the idea was that the native bees lose share of
| the resources to honeybees that are artificially
| supported. Which is not something I had thought about
| before.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Bees and flowers have a commensel relationship where the
| flowers provide nectar and some pollen to the bees in
| exchange for distribution of the flower's pollen for
| fertilization. The bees aren't "stealing" anything. That
| nectar has no purpose to the plant if it doesn't attract
| pollinators.
|
| Of course neither the bees nor the flowers are conscious of
| this relationship or their roles in it as it evolved
| naturally from the natures of both plants and insects.
| mike_richards wrote:
| It may have to do with the flowers you have in your yard. I
| have a beehive and a large number and diversity of native
| pollinators, but I plant to attract and support them.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > In a way, beekeeping is stealing nectar from wild bees.
|
| Congrats! You've independently discovered the plot of _Bee
| Movie_ , spawner of one million memes.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > You could never domesticate a robin.
|
| I dunno. We domesticated the Rock Dove just fine.
| dotdi wrote:
| https://archive.ph/MJDbV
| justinclift wrote:
| > Gareth John ... who lives on a quiet lane above a river in
| Oxfordshire. > John asked me not to disclose his exact location,
| because his hives fell off the radar of the National Bee Unit ...
|
| Giving his _full name_ and the area he lives seems like a super
| incompetent way to "not disclose" his location.
|
| Just a basic online search for his name and bee keeping related
| terms finds the guy's location pretty clearly. :(
| throwawayoaky wrote:
| Too many honeybees! Was hoping this would be about bumbles and
| carpenters
| mrweasel wrote:
| There's a lot of weird assumptions in the article. "Normal"
| beekeepers try to breed varroa resistant bees as well, but still
| trying to keep the non-resistant ones alive too. It might be
| faster to just let nature deal with the issue, but that means
| losing an insane amount of hives. It's basically the same as
| claiming that hunters don't care about animals or the forrest, or
| that dairy farms don't care about their cows. All beekeepers want
| the same thing, health bees, being able to go out and just watch
| them, it's not like we have some weird need to open a hive every
| week and inspect 30 frames for bad signs... That's the boring
| part.
|
| Most of the bees being kept by beekeepers aren't natural as such.
| One of the most common types is Buckfast and that's a cross
| between a number of different species. So is the suggestion that
| we kill 75% of the bees in apiaries to "keep it natural"?
|
| Normally you also only buy one or two colonies, the rest of you
| apiary will be made from those original colonies and you only buy
| new ones in case of disease or if you want to build a larger
| apiary faster. So I don't get the negativity towards "buying bees
| online". While I do think swarm catching is great, I'd recommend
| getting the swarm checked for disease before placing it in any
| apiary.
| pell wrote:
| >or that dairy farms don't care about their cows
|
| If you go by the conditions the majority of milk cows in
| industrialized nations live under that is a very obvious
| conclusion.
| Retric wrote:
| Farmers want less stressed cows because they produce more
| milk. The underlying economics means they have other
| concerns, but even "factory" dairy farms will tend to
| optimize more for cow comfort than you might think.
|
| People also overly focus on density without understanding
| cows are herd animals. They form herds even in empty fields.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| That's particularly a US problem, ours are not crammed like
| sardine cans.
| marliechiller wrote:
| what about disbudding, premature parent/calf separation,
| artifical insemination and harvesting of male calfs?
| floren wrote:
| Most modern dairymen avoid male calves entirely through
| the use of sexed semen.
| TheChaplain wrote:
| Confirmed. Family relative in Sweden is a farmer, their
| cows roam around freely and go to the milking robot
| themselves when they need.
| Loughla wrote:
| Family relative in the US is a farmer as well, their cows
| roam around freely and go to the milking robot themselves
| when they need.
|
| It's true. But it's also anecdotal.
| tptacek wrote:
| There are battery-farming operations all over Europe
| (particularly in the UK), and there are pasture farming
| operations all over the US.
| loxdalen wrote:
| Source?
| mrweasel wrote:
| https://aabentlandbrug.dk/faq <- In Danish though. Dairy
| cows must have access to pastures from April 15th until
| November, for at least six hours per day.
|
| Inside a cow must have at least 6.6 - 8m2, depending on
| the size of the cow.
|
| Note that the rules are worse for cows breed for meat.
| scruple wrote:
| Interesting. Where I grew up, rural Ohio, was a massive
| dairy farm where the milk was put into container ships
| and sent overseas to... Denmark.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Danish dairy products have a huge market in Asia and the
| Middle East
| BagelGuy wrote:
| While their living conditions are better it seems a stretch
| to say that these farmers "care" much for the beings they
| imprison, artificially inseminate, and extract resources
| from.
|
| I imagine they aren't providing much care for the males
| born from their cows.
| znpy wrote:
| Thanks, as usual people from the usa are assuming there's
| no other way of living other than the USA way
| giantg2 wrote:
| Unless you're doing AI, all your subsequent stock will be mutts
| anyways.
| JacobAldridge wrote:
| I think I just realised why no farmers trained in Artificial
| Insemination are opening my "Detailed" and "Visual"
| Artificial Intelligence tutorials...
| cryptonector wrote:
| Strong, no-chemical-treatment hives with "good genetics" in
| low-pesticide environments have low loss rates.
|
| Even the loss rates we see advertised (38% or whatever) are not
| existential problems for beekeeping because you can split hives
| (i.e., reproduce) at a higher rate anyways. So the switch to
| no-chemical-treatment plans is not that hard.
|
| Honeybee colonies are mainly stressed by a) pesticides (in the
| pollen and nectar that they gather, in the wax that beekeepers
| give them to accelerate comb building, in the water they drink,
| and in the mite treatments they are subjected to), b) the
| varroa mites that have inadvertently been bred to be strong
| while the bees have been inadvertently bred to be weak.
| 000ooo000 wrote:
| >It's basically the same as claiming that hunters don't care
| about animals
|
| Is there a suggestion here that people who kill animals for
| fun/leisure care for them? In the same sense that one might use
| the word 'care' when referring to a loved one or a pet?
| mrweasel wrote:
| Yes... I mean you probably won't shoot the family dog if it's
| sick, you'd take it to the vet.
|
| Arguably hunters don't think in terms of single animals,
| unlike farmers, they care about the overall welfare of the
| ecosystem so that it may support sufficient number of animals
| to allow for hunting. I don't know how it works elsewhere,
| but I'd bet that Danish hunters do more to protect nature
| than any vegan or vegetarian organisation and they almost
| always work with nature preservation organisations.
| 000ooo000 wrote:
| So hunters 'care' for animals in the ecosystem so that they
| can continue to kill the animals in the ecosystem? Not very
| convincing..
| depressedpanda wrote:
| Like it or not predators hunting prey is part of any
| natural ecosystem. A necessary part.
|
| I don't know what it's like where you are from, but in
| general I'd say hunters care a lot more about, and do
| more for, nature in their local ecosystem than your
| average city dwelling vegan hipster.
| abeppu wrote:
| I've heard people casually make the argument that human
| hunters function similarly to natural predators in terms
| of increasing population fitness -- but does that
| actually make sense?
|
| A natural predator is incentivized to identify and go
| after a weak prey animal, b/c it's easier. Maybe this
| shifts the prey population to be a bit faster, or have
| sharper reflexes or something. But a modern human hunter
| may feel drawn to try to take the choicest specimen (e.g.
| a mature male deer with large antlers), and shoots from a
| distance, and a bullet moves too fast for the variance in
| reaction time or running speed of the animals to matter.
| Do human hunters using modern tech really select for
| fitness?
|
| I do know that in fisheries around the world, when
| regulations said that only fish of a given species above
| a given size could be kept, fish got smaller. I.e. they
| were "fitter" in the sense of being more likely to be
| released by a human fisher, but not in the sense of
| having gained any advantage wrt the natural parts of
| their ecosystem. There are a lot of fishing competitions
| where the size of the largest fish trends down over time
| (and the records were set decades ago) not because
| individual competitors got worse at fishing, but because
| we selected against large fish.
|
| I think the most plausible argument for human hunters
| being a net environmental good is just that in many
| places the fees associated with hunting licenses are a
| source of funds for actual conservation work.
| civilitty wrote:
| What have those vegans done for animals? Just because
| they can't stomach eating them doesn't mean they actually
| "care" about animals enough to do something productive.
|
| In the US, hunters have long spearheaded conservation
| efforts. Theodore Roosevelt said, over a hundred years
| ago:
|
| _> "In a civilized and cultivated country, wild animals
| only continue to exist at all when preserved by
| sportsmen. The excellent people who protest against all
| hunting, and consider sportsmen as enemies of wildlife,
| are ignorant of the fact that in reality the genuine
| sportsman is by all odds the most important factor in
| keeping the larger and more valuable wild creatures from
| total extermination."_
|
| He a prolific hunter himself was responsible for
| significant expanding the national park system and
| founded the wildlife refuge system.
| swores wrote:
| > _I 'd say hunters care a lot more about, and do more
| for, nature in their local ecosystem than your average
| city dwelling vegan hipster._
|
| I don't think you've met many vegan hipsters, as while I
| can't claim to be either of those things I've known many,
| many of them and would pretty much universally disagree
| with you.
|
| (Though a) I'm in UK which maybe makes a different
| compared to where you are, and b) anecdotes are of course
| not data, and the one thing we can say for sure is that
| within types of people such as "vegan" or "hunter" there
| are certainly going to be some who are absolute cunts,
| some who are practically angels, and everything in
| between. But despite only having anecdotes not data, I
| feel pretty confident in my anecdotal experience backing
| up the notion that the average vegan is generally going
| to care more about animals than the average non-vegan).
| bleuarff wrote:
| On the other hand, the head of the french hunting
| federation has openly said he couldn't care less about
| animals and regulations. While receiving public funds to
| fulfill a mission of regulation.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Okay, that is actually down right idiotic. The Danish
| hunters association even wants cat regulated due to the
| excessive damage they do to wildlife.
| consumer451 wrote:
| They might get inspiration from New Zealand.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/19/bird-
| killing-m...
| jemmyw wrote:
| I guess there is the idea that hunters wish the animal
| species well so they can continue hunting. Tell that to the
| passenger pigeon, whose last existing flock was knowingly
| hunted, making the species effectively extinct.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| In 1900 ... 123 years ago.
|
| Not all hunters are conservationists but most are and laws
| and regulations are in place to protect animal species from
| over hunting (at least in Canada most of the US). Some
| conservation efforts are almost entirely run by hunters,
| for instance Duck's Unlimited has majority of its members
| as hunters.
| caput770 wrote:
| You clearly have little idea of what you're talking about if
| you think hunters kill animals for fun and leisure.
| riversflow wrote:
| I know a lot of hunters. Fun and leisure is exactly how I
| would describe it. Do you really think most hunters kill
| animals out of necessity? There are exceptions of course
| but, lol.
|
| There is certainly a place for hunting and there are
| certainly hunters who care deeply about ecology. I don't
| see how it's not a combination of fun and leisure though.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I know many hunters, and they do.
| joshxyz wrote:
| [flagged]
| ggm wrote:
| A different article I read this week says urban bees exceed the
| feeding capacity in the city in some places and we need to be
| more circumspect about who, and how many bees.
|
| More diverse pollination insects would probably be net beneficial
| in bee pollinated foods.
| adolph wrote:
| A recent popular science book I'd recommend is "Endless Forms:
| The Secret World of Wasps" by Seirian Sumner. It speaks to
| wasps' utility as pollinators, pest eaters and how bees and
| ants are descendants of wasps. After reading it I turned over a
| dirt dauber next and showed my kids the wasp larva with the
| separate chamber of immobilized but living spiders and other
| bugs the mother wasp had apportioned for the larva.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Endless-Forms-Secret-World-Wasps/dp/0...
| cryptonector wrote:
| > and we need to be more circumspect about who, and how many
| bees.
|
| Urban beekeepers in low-capacity areas will give up when their
| hobby colonies fail. Let them.
| voisin wrote:
| That's one approach. Or we could advocate for more pollinator
| friendly plantings on boulevards and the edges of parks, and
| advocate for the outright banning of pesticides/herbicides in
| parks and on lawns. I find it unconscionable that we have
| elevated green, non-native monoculture lawns to the highest
| order, allowing people to spray what they want and waste up
| to 75% of household water on irrigating their lawns for...
| the ego stroke of green lawns in August?
| tptacek wrote:
| In the US, urban beekeepers are harming native pollinators by
| keeping livestock bees --- all honeybees are livestock in the
| US, where they're invasive.
| kibwen wrote:
| Honeybees aren't native to the US, but there are lots of
| native bee species. I see no reason to assume that every
| beekeeper is only in it for the honey.
| avalys wrote:
| You can tell who didn't bother to read the article here, by the
| people who clearly assumed the article was asking "Is Beekeeping
| Morally Wrong?", as opposed to the actual topic of the article
| which might have been better titled "Is Beekeeping Using the
| Wrong Approach?"
| swores wrote:
| Or maybe people are just more interested in arguing for/against
| the first one and a comments thread like this seems like a good
| place for it? It's not like they're such unrelated topics that
| discussing beekeeping ethics in this thread is ridiculous if
| that's what people want to discuss, it's not like discussing
| potato chips in a thread about CPU chips.
|
| I'll also add that I don't think there's anything intrinsically
| wrong, as you seem to, with coming straight to a HN comments
| thread without first reading the article. I know I'm not alone
| in intentionally doing that quite often, partly because for
| many subjects (including this one) I'm not really interested
| enough to want to read an article-length deep dive of any
| single person's opinion, whereas seeing a wide range of views
| in comment-length bee-sized pieces has the potential to be
| interesting to me. I've always got the option to go read the
| full article if after reading the comments it seems like I'd
| find it interesting to do so.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-23 23:01 UTC)