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Shame. The US is a beautiful country and psycho cult rednecks have let deregulation ruin such beautiful wilderness.
I was worried so I looked for the source of the information, it seems to be from 'Washington State University" from their website they say it concerns “Commercial honey bee colony”, so it might not be all bees (I don’t know enough to say what the difference is exactly), they say “60 to 70% losses” (not 80), and they also say “Over the past decade, annual losses have typically ranged between 40 and 50%.”, so it is probably worrying but not as much as the CBS article was making it seem.
so worry but not panicking yet. gotcha, nothing will be done then.
I don’t know whether you were satiric or not, but it feels like it, hard to tell on a text medium. No hard feelings either way 😄
If you were “mocking my post in a satiric way”: I didn’t mean to say that nothing should be done or that it was not a reason to worry. I actually believe we should protect our ecosystems, but I think we need accurate data and this kind of posts, even if they convey the “right” message according to me, are misleading and create false information about what is going on. I truly believe we should try to avoid doing this.
Part of the panicking should be wild bees. They’re dying at accelerated rates.
We also know why, commercial bee keeping is part of it, as is hobbies bee keeping.
And pesticides… and monoculture farming.
This story is about domesticated honeybees, which have been declining for decades due to Colony Collapse Disorder and other stressors. Native North American bees are in their own long-term decline, with 1 in 4 species at risk of extinction. However, domesticated honeybees are tremendously important for the pollination and yield of many crops important to humans, and this population drop, thought to be the largest annual losses seen, should be considered in the context of the longer decline, and the possibility that we could hit a tipping point when pollination, and a crucial pillar of our food system, could fail.
I know it’s likely pesticides, but have we officially ruled out bee assassins?
i personally just think the bees are sentient and have depression
Ah cmon now, stop spreading conspiracy theories. They probably just couldn’t prove citizenship and were deported.
All those darn African killer bees! Stealing all the jobs!
Idk, I heard that trans people and immigrants are murdering bees.
You mean wasps? They have been pretty quiet lately…
make sure you retract words like bias and gender from your articles and they will come back. they are just extremely bigoted.
I think you mean… Beegoted.
nice one!
I’m not a bee, you’re not a bee, so it sounds like a them problem.
(On the internet, nobody knows you’re a bee.)
You can say whatever you want about them in text. As long as you don’t dance it, they’ll be none the wiser.
Remember that honey-producing bees are terrible pollenators compared to the specific pollenators who don’t produce honey. The honey producing bees being kept by everyone are artifically outcompeting the specific pollenators, which are what we really need to be supporting.
I was watching some of my native plants and noticed a fair amount of house flies crawling on them. So, I looked it up. It turns out that flies as a group are the second most important pollinator behind bees as a group.
Okay, but how do I personally monetize non-honey making bees? Sure, the general ecology needs this, but what’s in it for me, right this instant?
Hey, it doesn’t need to be right this instant. It could instead be projected revenue next quarter.
A bee petting zoo! Bumblebees are very cute and very fluffy. Having a petting zoo would help people get I touch with nature, and if the guests are too belligerent about it then the bees will just sting them. I think that bumblebees might also not die after stinging, and if so they’d learn how to fight humans. When the time is right you can unleash a swarm of cute fluffy bees trained in anti-human warfare. You could use them to crush any competition. If you still want more money you can become a bee-based supervillain and rob banks or something.
All you can do is add to pollen I guess. Plant seeds of native plants that bees love. Indiscriminately in random places.
Maybe someone else has some better ideas.
Tear out the lawn and re-wild the yard? Wild flowers, clover, etc. Less watering and mowing, and not just bees will love it - all kinds of insects and wildlife from birds to deer.
Bees aren’t the only arthropods having this problem, but for most of the other non-pollinators people seem to think "good less bugs to bother me. " I guess we should just give up on the survival of the food chain.
The news for insects is not entirely bad, emerald ash borers are finding the ability to survive in areas that were formerly too cold for them. This allows them to kill more trees turning them into kindling for lightning strikes and other fire starting events.
Who could have known that fucking with our habitat might have negative consequences for us?
Nowhere in the article does it say we lost 80% of the bee population. You are spreading misinformation
You’re correct. The quote is "If we lose 80% of our bees every year, the industry cannot survive, which means we cannot pollinate at the scale that we need to produce food in the United States."
It does, in a quote.
Not on the current scenario.
Best comment lmao
The people need their ads (or whatever the reasoning is), show some compassion, in a few decades they’ll only be seeing the same Nuka Cola ad everywhere.
I have a decently locked down browser and adblocker. The real page loads faster for me, takes no archive resources, and other have pointed out other benefits of preserving the canonical link as well.
Honey bees are dying but you can help native bees in your area. Find out what they like and plant that shit. Also just letting weeds grow helps a lot of species.
I get leafcutter bees at my place as well as a few other solitary species
Making bee hotels for solitary bees is child’s play. Take a chunk of wood, drill holes, hang in a tree.
Technical aspects:
- Don’t use pressure treated lumber, anything else is fine.
- Look up “solitary bee hotel” for your area to see what size holes to make for the locals. In any case, it’s going to be a variety of different sizes to cover all your bases. Doesn’t have to bee (heh) perfect.
- Make the holes, especially the edges, nice and smooth. They’re not dumb enough to nest their if the hole is raggedy and might jack up their wings.
That’s mostly it. You can research easily enough in an hour or less There’s a woman on YouTube that sells bee hotels and has solid advice for making your own. Wish I remembered her name. Anyone?
Damned satisfying when you find the holes plugged with wax! You have new tenants! Stupid easy and basically free.
CAVEAT: These things are single use. Chunk 'em out every season, or better, burn them. Keeps the mites out. Make another for free.
Weeds? I thought they were pests
As long as you mow them it’s all good. Just having a yard with anything than just a monoculture grass is better.
Weeds aren’t really a thing. A weed is just a plant we don’t like.
weeds are to gardens like my house is to HOAs.
I can’t do that! What about my nice green grass lawn? /s
My city will put a letter in my mailbox telling me to get rid of weeds and fine me $150 if I don’t. Rip
Ouch. I have been trying to plant native plants in our garden. Luckily I don’t have anything like that in my city.
How do they enforce that? HOA?
Cities have a lot of soft power in that regard. Mine, just as an example, bans parking on grass. Even if you’re not in a fancy neighborhood, and have been parking on your lawn underneath the spreading oak tree for the last 50 years, they can ticket you for it (and tow) if they feel like being ornery.
I think the usual wording for grass/plants goes along the lines of property values and nuisances to bring it within legal frameworks for what they can regulate.
The actual city sends a fine. If you don’t clean it, they send a crew. If you don’t pay for the crew, they lien the property.
Source: got letter from the city a week ago.
In fairness, I’ve been dealing with a lot and there were some areas that looked like we were abandoned. I’ve been meaning to clean out the unwanted stuff so the flowers can grow. My lawn is mostly moss and clover and that’s not what they cared about.
No, the city rolls around and if there are things sticking up out of the ground high enough outside of a flower bed they take pictures and send you a letter
I don’t like this meme
I definitely don’t want to downplay a crisis, but I feel like I’ve been seeing headlines saying “all the bees are dying and we don’t know why” every year for nearly 20 years now.
I’m no bee expert. Just seems to me, based on the headlines, bees would’ve been extinct 10 years ago.
Some cursory searching led me to Colony Collapse Disorder which seems to have no agreed-upon cause. It appears devastating losses to honey bee colonies started being reported around 1900. But it also mentions:
In 2024, the United States Census of Agriculture reported an all-time high in commercial honey bee hives (mostly in Texas), making them the fastest-growing livestock segment in the country.[38]
Link to the source cited there: https://archive.is/nfeb2
Apparently last year saw the largest honey bee populations in US history. Though they write that huge boom in honey bee population is a threat to other native pollinators, so I guess that presents its own unique problems.
The issue is OP is spreading misinformation. You‘re right, we haven‘t lost 80% of the bee population, because this was a hypothetical statement in the article saying it would have consequences if it happened.
Usually, when people talk about bees dying, they mean wild bees. Unlike honey bees they aren’t cultivated by us. They also tend to be better pollinators than honey bees, adapted to local plants that honey bees can’t handle well.
I can’t find any research on the impact of increased prevalence of vaping on bee populations. I feel there should be scientific studies done on this. It’s pretty much sweet smelling sticky bee poison that people are now walking about puffing all over every surface.
Most domesticated bee species aren’t native to the US. It’s quite possible they are just getting bee-ported.
