Honeybee Deaths Surge In U.S.: 'Something Real Bad Is Going On'
Posted by TwoRight9509@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 290 comments
Washington State entomologists predict honeybee losses this year could reach up to 70%.
Over the past ten years, colony los have averaged between 40 and 50%.
“Until about two decades ago, beekeepers would typically lose only 10-20% of their bees over the winter months.”
Weed killing pesticides and climate change are the main culprits.
Collapse related because:
We won’t do anything to prevent honeybee colony collapse, until most if not all of them collapse.
ishitar@reddit
I suspect we are nearing an oligomer mimic threshold, where foreign molecules, like nanoplastics, are mimicking and interfering with neurological processes to the extent that organisms highly dependent on higher level communication for colony survival will begin to die off. If you think of an entire colony like a human brain that can encode, via dancing and pheromones where nectar bearing flowers are, then this is like hive dementia. At some point the center cannot hold and all the adult honeybees disappear, leaving the queen, brood and honey to slowly die off (colony collapse disorder). All of this makes perfect sense.
jaybsuave@reddit
Wow very interesting, where can I read more about this?
Chief_Kief@reddit
More simply put, as it relates to humans:
Oligomers are low molecular weight polymers comprising a small number of repeat units whose physical properties are significantly dependent on the length of the chain.
The amyloid-β oligomer (AβO) hypothesis was introduced in 1998. It proposed that the brain damage leading to Alzheimer's disease (AD) was instigated by soluble, ligand-like AβOs.
jaybsuave@reddit
Ah beta amyloid plaque we learned about that in bio, smh
ishitar@reddit
It's important to understand that both primary plastic and secondary nanoplastic can shed even smaller particles or so called oligomers and while they don't necessarily act exactly like both the necessary oligomer (protein combos) in the body, and the harmful ones, they are small enough to disrupt the protein pathways in the body. And the higher the concentration of these oligomer that the body does not know how to deal with or deal with efficiently, the more disruption.
Beta amyloid plaque is only one form of oligomer derived plaque, in addition to things like Alpha-synuclein Lewy bodies, found in Parkinsons disease. There's correlation with nanoplastic concentration to both, nanoplastic levels being used as a stand in for both larger particles and smaller plastic oligomers that can precipitate larger amyloid beta and Lewy bodies, etc.
Additionally, nanoplastic has been found to be able to interact with fibrinogen, a blood clotting factor, that also interacts with large oligomer bodies like amyloid beta plaque and lewy bodies, and these interactions are being studied for their contribution to the white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) found in cerebral small vessel disease which is condition parallel with Alzheimer's progression and other forms of neurodegeneration.
This is not to say that honey bees get dementia the same way that humans do - and even the pathogenesis of dementia in humans is not fully understood - we only know the conditions we find along the way. For example, in honey bees, the nanoplastic could very well be contributing to the destruction of a critical microbiome component of a bee's gut-brain axis, as some of the studies suggest.
jaybsuave@reddit
We’re fucked.
ishitar@reddit
The Internet - note, not all of these are about the honey bee, but can help form a picture of what happens to higher level organisms:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35738383/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969723079925
https://particleandfibretoxicology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12989-020-00358-y
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/nanoplastics-may-help-set-stage-parkinson-s-risk
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads0834
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165993623002170 (most important outcome - impact on insect physiology is dose dependent - poison is in the dose or concentration in insects)
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-nanoplastics-food-chain-insects-fish.html
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38323841/
melody_magical@reddit
I'm 21 and two COVID infections and microplastics have made me unable to remember stuff right away. I need to jot a lot more things down now.
Rick-burp-Sanchez@reddit
I live in the rural Midwest. It's not "something." It's not a mysterious bogeyman we can't blame. We know what it is here: it's insecticides and pesticides laced with nicotine-like chemicals that cause the bees to stop going home, working, or acting like normal bees. Super farms and mega corporations are aware of it and sweep it under the rug. Talking to 80+ year-old beekeepers and farmers about it, we've known a long time.
It's too fucking late. Drastic action was necessary about a decade ago.
TheWeeWeeWrangler@reddit
This comment describes exactly why I hate the phrase "Raising awareness". We're past the breaking point. Everyone knows drugs are bad. Everyone knows war is bad. Everyone knows the environment is fucked. Everyone knows.
tonywinterfell@reddit
I’m pretty aware of how fucked we are. Hasn’t changed anything yet, but fingers crossed!
dkorabell@reddit
Leonard Cohen "Everybody Knows"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxd23UVID7k
Pap3rStreetSoapCo@reddit
Everybody knows the war is over; everybody knows the good guys lost.
echidna75@reddit
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking Everybody knows that the captain lied
God, I love that song
Leftover_reason@reddit
Everybody know the fight is fixed. The poor stay poor and the rich get rich. That’s how it goes.
Pap3rStreetSoapCo@reddit
The ol’ boy could write a song, that’s for sure.
IGnuGnat@reddit
I'm a massive Cohen fan, but I actually like the Sigrid cover more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrV5of2p-oc
Adamskog@reddit
This feels like shameless self-promotion, but I recorded a metal cover of Everybody Knows last year, with the lyrics altered to have a more environmental / collapse message, I don't know if it's sacrilege to alter Leonard Cohen lyrics but it fits the topic of this thread: https://youtu.be/a7yufgRKtFk?si=EZbeYNdD4dLs-bQK
IGnuGnat@reddit
Were you playing guitar and singing? I think that was an interesting interpretation of the song,
Adamskog@reddit
Thanks, yeh guitar, bass vocals and keys.
righttoabsurdity@reddit
Damn that was awesome! Well done on all fronts!
KalayaMdsn@reddit
I’m a huge fan of the Concrete Blonde version from 1990 (Jesus, HOW am I so damn old?).
skilledlosers@reddit
I was singing it in in the co cret blond version...
areyouthrough@reddit
Pump Up the Volume fan?
WideRide@reddit
Naked, wearing only.a cock-ring
short_bus_genius@reddit
Oooph…. That was my jam in college.
tjazz8@reddit
I love that version!
SimpleAsEndOf@reddit
Just for consistency sakes, please Blame Biden.
POSTHVMAN@reddit
Whhaaaat? I love them both and haven’t heard this!
BeardySam@reddit
So that’s the thing about Cohen, he was an incredible lyricist but his production is always so middling that every musician wanted to cover his work because they thought they could do better.
It’s a great trick if you can do it, you just churn out songs that don’t sell and sit on the royalties instead. Until his manager stole them all.
echidna75@reddit
I agree about Cohen: top-notch incredible lyricist but weird choices on instrumentation.
MakeRFutureDirectly@reddit
…and we are not the good guys.
onioning@reddit
Right. We're past that and on to Dylan's Everything is Broken.
mburke6@reddit
Nobody ever listens to me. I might as well be a Leonard Cohen album.
DanielStripeTiger@reddit
I say this all the time. no one has ever gotten the reference. you, I like.
ObamaLovesKetamine@reddit
You said "you I like" instead of "I like you." That's funny. I like that. Wait -- "that I like."
worldnotworld@reddit
Young Ones quotes are always welcome.
Professional_Hunt756@reddit
He won the hearts of countless music fans with his unique artistic style and profound intellectual content. I think his music and words will continue to leave a profound mark on culture
4thand9@reddit
You win the internet today.
onionfunyunbunion@reddit
LOL
Atworkwasalreadytake@reddit
Don Henley’s version is better.
atomicavox@reddit
Concrete Blonde does a great cover of this.
Metals4J@reddit
I also like the Concrete Blonde version: https://youtu.be/367C7L5A4BQ
Suddenlyfoxes@reddit
That one's great.
I'm also a fan of the Wild Fire cover.
anaheimhots@reddit
Heart that version
Competitive-Oil8974@reddit
Every human knows. Too bad we think all of the other living things don't have a right to be here without us.
We deserve extinction.
whatevergalaxyuniver@reddit
Correct, I don't get why people are so against someone committing suicide when people deserve to go extinct anyways.
MakeRFutureDirectly@reddit
Time to raise our glasses, sing a song and kiss our asses goodbye!!!
pippopozzato@reddit
Interesting fact ... LIVESTRONG created by Lance Armstrong only raises awareness. Many Americans think Lance Armstrong was trying to cure cancer or do cancer research, no, the only thing LIVESTRONG ever did was raise awareness ... what a joke.
anotheramethyst@reddit
Cancer is a thing??!!!! Holy shit I had no idea before
pippopozzato@reddit
LIVESTRONG if you know anything about bike racers LIVESTRONG was basically a way for Lance to inherit some money.
It goes like this ... LIVESTRONG builds an office building and at the same time Lance has work done on his house.
I am not saying Lance would do something dishonest ... but.
st8odk@reddit
the balls on that guy
GovernmentOpening254@reddit
He sure ate Crow, didn’t he?
Deus_is_Mocking_Us@reddit
OOOOhhhhhh!!!!
GovernmentOpening254@reddit
Thank you! Thank you! I’ll be here all week! Try the fish.
Thoracic_Snark@reddit
balls̶
Professional_Hunt756@reddit
LIVESTRONG's mission is to raise cancer awareness and support patients, not to directly conduct cancer research
pippopozzato@reddit
Fugazy ... Fuggazzi ... angel dust and fairy tales.
Caelarch@reddit
Livestrong paid part of the cost for my wife and I to have IVF when she was diagnosed with cancer as a young woman. Meant a lot to us at the time.
Glancing-Thought@reddit
We have wild honey bees here in the Nordics (plenty of common pesticides are banned) and the Brits come every now and then to collect some for genetic diversity). While I too have noticed a down-tick in bugsplats our scientists aren't actually catching less in their traps. So either our measurments are off, we're being gas-lit somehow or the bugs are doing just fine here.
Professional_Hunt756@reddit
I believe that through continued scientific research and monitoring, we can better understand the causes of these changes and take conservation measures accordingly
Glancing-Thought@reddit
Banning certain pesticides seems like an obvious first step even now. We have plenty of research here in the Nordics and it's not like it's secret. Feel free to compare notes.
Bozhark@reddit
Maybe Norway is a bubble?
loralailoralai@reddit
Maybe it’s not just Norway.
earthkincollective@reddit
There have been massive declines in insect populations in general at multiple places around the world. The ones I've read about were the Caribbean and Germany.
Gotdanutsdou@reddit
Scottie doesn’t know.
Foehammer87@reddit
It's part of not active action. Like the obsession with "starting a conversation" about any divisive topic that's been discussed to death for decades.
Desperate-Strategy10@reddit
I very much disagree with this. Just in my little rural town, there have been dozens of people who straight up did not know what was happening outside of town/the immediate are. And since things have changed slowly over time, they haven’t noticed the changes here either.
However, the people who don’t know this stuff at this point generally also just don’t care. Raising awareness is still important, since there are still sheltered people like me when I was younger who will receive that information and care, but it’s useless on its own.
MavinMarv@reddit
Move out of a rural town and you’ll realize people do notice the changes and what’s going on. I think most people that live in a rural town from my experience live in rural towns in the to be ignorant of what’s going on, on purpose. That or they’re just dumb too. Most people that I know that actually live in a rural towns do so to get away from all the BS. Because they know what’s coming. That’s my future plan too, is to live in a rural area knowing damn sure well the future is fucked and just semi ignore it now until the end comes so I can finally live my life before the end of it all.
TikiTDO@reddit
I think you over-estimate how many people notice. In my experience the percentage is roughly the same, at most a tiny bit higher in population centers. It just seems like it's higher because the a small percentage of a big population is just naturally bigger than a small percentage of a small population. If that number is enough for these people to form some sort of community, that instantly creates the illusion that the perspective is far more common than it actually is.
Even in urban centers, most people are too concerned with their job, their favourite TV shows, the drama among their favourite celebrities, and arguments among their family matters. Mind you, it's not because people don't have access to this information, it's just that they don't have the capacity to process it in conjunction with everything else going on.
You can see this effect by simply comparing the number of different people engaged in these topics, as compared to the number engaged with other more popular pastimes. Just click on /r/all, and compare how many people are discussing the most inane, over-discussed topics. Most of the problems of the world are simply too complex and disheartening for most people to engage with.
SweetMister@reddit
Okay. So now your awareness is raised. What does it matter? The point of action wad decades ago. Best to not know now.
cripplinganxietylmao@reddit
Same. It’s like saying we’re going to “raise awareness” about how smoking can lead to lung cancer. WE KNOW. EVERYONE KNOWS! And yet nothing is being done about it for the honeybees. At least with smoking they put a warning label on shit and made it more expensive. But for the bees? “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” bc it would hurt the bottom line to actually protect the environment. Reasons why I will not have kids.
DryBiscotti5058@reddit
Thank goodness.
collapse-ModTeam@reddit
Hi, DryBiscotti5058. Thanks for contributing. However, your comment was removed from /r/collapse for:
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cripplinganxietylmao@reddit
Did you make a new account just to comment this? LOL. Get a life.
Obelisko78@reddit
Don't worry, it's nothing new. It's not only been seen before, it's been predicted and prohesized to happen again and again until the final act. It just seems momentous to us because we're stuck in the middle of the current version of it, inescapably playing our parts in its inevitable occurrence
"Spengler's model of history postulates that human cultures and civilizations are akin to biological entities, each with a limited, predictable, and deterministic lifespan
Spengler predicted that about the year 2000, Western civilization would enter the period of pre‑death emergency which would lead to 200 years of Caeserism (extra-constitutional omnipotence of the executive branch of government) before Western civilization's final collapse"
zilchxzero@reddit
Stanhope had a great routine about this:
https://youtu.be/fXk2Ts-Mt2c?si=2wxzNbYPRCxwnNGD
Z3r0sama2017@reddit
Yeah the powers that be only let the story out to the masses now we are past the PONR. Their will be studies, the studies will say 'it's far too late', Big AG will say 'oh well may aswell continue BAU since nothing can be done' and the public will swallow that along with all the other crao.
ImSuperHelpful@reddit
You think that because you know these things are bad and project your knowledge onto others. There are a lot of people who have no idea what’s happening to the bees, I’d venture a guess that less than 1 in 4 would know what you’re talking about.
Beyond that, “raising awareness” also puts it front and center in front of folks who already know but who’ve forgotten (because there are 50 billion bad things to think about). Were you discussing or even thinking about the bee problem within 24 hours of this post? How about a week? I do, but I ran a honey farm up until a couple years ago, but most don’t.
TLDR stop shitting on raising awareness, it’s valuable.
afternever@reddit
M'kay
thelonetwig@reddit
The next best time to do something is today. If we all roll over and let the worst happen we're just as bad. https://www.countryliving.com/home-maintenance/a26986625/beekeeping-for-beginners/ Resource for learning about how to start a bee colony. If you don't have that level of cash, get a pollinator pack of flower seeds and scatter them whenever and wherever you can. Try. If we all try a little, it's better than not trying at all.
teenietemple@reddit
neonicotinoids i believe are that culprit you mentioned. i took a college course in pollinator biology. my professors life work was figuring out how to save the bees. he’s a wonderful man and he has several passionate grad students working under him. i’m hopeful, or at least hanging onto hope that we can fix this😭😭
Undisguised@reddit
Forgive me for asking such a basic question but would banning this particular pesticide improve the situation, or do they persist in the environment?
voidsong@reddit
We are basically in the "schadenfreude" stage of collapse, where all of us who spent decades trying to warn people about this stuff (only to be laughed at and ignored) get to watch them panic as they realize we were right.
Obviously i'd had preferred if they had just listened when it was still possible to fix. But that wasn't an option apparently. So we just have to enjoy watching them shit their pants in terror and buckle in for the ride.
whatevergalaxyuniver@reddit
so the babies/children, the indigenous, and the poor people deserve this too?
DickCamera@reddit
As someone whose generally skeptical of the naysayers and general fudd spreaders, do you have any sources for the "we were right" part? On any specific issue. Like I'm assuming general use of glyphosate probably isn't great, but the studies I've seen generally show that unless you're drinking it or using it as sunblock it has no negative effects. Are there studies showing that it negatively impacts the bees, or other unintended ecological consequences?
Suppafly@reddit
People would rather downvote you than admit that the facts don't really fit their narrative.
pippopozzato@reddit
Chestnut Trees are wind pollinated. I always say Chestnut Trees are the smartest trees on earth and this is one of the reasons. Chestnut Trees stay dormant later than all other fruit & nut trees, they are very drought resistant. Time to bring back The American Chestnut Tree !
Oh what's that you say ? ... "they have been trying to bring it back for over 100 years and can't."
tuigger@reddit
There was a promising gmo candidate, Darling 52, that the American Chestnut Foundation almost put into production, but it turns out the line was contaminated and the whole project had to be started over.
pippopozzato@reddit
When ever someone says "technology will save us" I mention the story of The American Chestnut Tree.
tuigger@reddit
Part of the reason for the explosion in population of the last century was from the Green Revolution, where genetic engineering and purposeful crossbreeding was used to develop more productive and healthier crops.
The same technology can be used to develop a blight-resistant American Chestnut, but it has to be done exceptionally well or the blight will catch up to the chestnut and all that work will be wasted, which is why the foundation is still going forward but not with the Darling 54/58 line.
It's a tree worth fighting for, that's for sure.
pippopozzato@reddit
When I purchased my Chestnut Farm in Oregon in 2008 I read a few Chestnut Tree books. I remember two challenges with bringing back the American Chestnut Tree being for some reason trees crossbred would do good until 17 years old then the tree dies. For a scientist getting your results every 17 years drags things out. Plus the more you cross breed the American Chestnut Tree with blight resistant trees takes the tree away from being an American Chestnut Tree.
tuigger@reddit
You have described why the American Chestnut Foundation is being so picky: they aren't crossbreeding with Asian trees, they are inserting a blight resistance gene like Monsanto did with Roundup-resistant corn but without the billions of dollars in funding.
pippopozzato@reddit
Wake me up when they figure it out.
PrestigiousCrab6345@reddit
It’s not too late. The people sounding the alarms are the honey producers. They are pretty screwed in most states.
But wild bees can be saved. Landowners can create bee habitats for wild bee species and improve the populations near their farms and orchards.
https://pollinators.msu.edu/resources/pollinator-planting/native-bee-habitat/index.aspx#:~:text=Most%20native%20bees%20nest%20in,wood%20for%20them%20to%20use
snackofalltrades@reddit
My lawn borders a wooded area, which my property extends about 200 feet into. I leave the wooded area natural and don’t do anything to manage it. It has all the things listed in the article you linked, but I’ve never seen any bees on my property. I’m also less than half a mile from several large farms. Basically bordered by farms to the south, west, and north.
Anything more I can do to support bees or bee habitats?
PrestigiousCrab6345@reddit
You could get some local wildflower seeds and spread them around.
professor_jeffjeff@reddit
It's not even that hard to create habitats for bees. Just don't get rid of dandelions in your yard, they're an important early spring food source for bees. You can throw a handful of wildflower seeds anywhere there's dirt and it'll create food for bees. You can sheet mulch your whole yard and turn it into a food forest and that makes a shitload of habitat for all kinds of insects but especially bees, although that's a bit more work than the other options. Just putting a few flowers in a pot on your front porch or balcony or wherever will create food for bees.
elohir@reddit
The problem is, dandelions completely wreck lawns. We'd probably have more luck encouraging people to consciously sacrifice lawn space for proper wild flower beds, and maybe encouraging things like buttercups, speedwell, etc. for lawns.
TheWoman2@reddit
Add some clover to your lawn, bees love it when it flowers.
Yamitenshi@reddit
We have a ton of lavender in our backyard and the bees are all over it
Super relaxing to just sit outside with all the bees buzzing next to you
SpicyButterBoy@reddit
And it’s easier to maintain than Kentucky bluegrass! We have a clover yard and I absolutely love it.
DrunkenBadguy@reddit
Im from EU, but one thing i always saw strange about US that they love carpet like Green lawns. And they HATE anything other, no flowers, no long grass, that is crazy for me.
SpicyButterBoy@reddit
r/fucklawns
urlach3r@reddit
Won't. I mean, have you met people?
PrestigiousCrab6345@reddit
If 10% of the people help, then that saves some bees and improved pollination in their area. Bees typically forage within 1-2 miles of their nest.
LordofShit@reddit
Getting people to install beehives in their honestly is a big ask.
PrestigiousCrab6345@reddit
You don’t need to install a beehive. Plant some flowers. Don’t mow your lawn until May. If you like, create an earthen ledge in your backyard.
LordofShit@reddit
Ahh well none of these are 'me' things at all. I dont have any such real-estate.
urlach3r@reddit
I admire the optimism, but when have we ever done anything about anything?
Foehammer87@reddit
Ozone layer, smog cities, river cleanup, ddt, leaded gas, people forget just how bad the 80s was pollutionwise. And yeah a lot of the progress was outsourcing the production but there was still massive headway made.
clubby37@reddit
The hole in the ozone layer. That was the one time I can think of, when we all agreed that the environmental damage wasn't worth the convenience, and now hair spray is slightly different.
Your point stands, though. I managed to come up with an exception, but you're right about the rule.
bernmont2016@reddit
One other example was banning DDT, the pesticide that was harming bald eagles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
fishsupreme@reddit
It's not too late for either honeybees or wild bees, we just need actual action on it.
People often miss the fact that honeybees are not wildlife and are not an endangered species; honeybees are livestock and only exist in the United States because we farm them. While they pollinate all kinds of things, there is nothing in the USA that is natively, naturally pollinated by honeybees.
Wild bees are natural pollinators here, though. But the great thing about insects is that they breed very quickly and can recover quite quickly, and they would do so if we'd just stop killing them. A ban on neonicitinoid pesticides would reverse the insect population collapse almost overnight.
But farming is more expensive without neonicitinoid pesticides, so the big agribusinesses are very opposed to such a thing, so nobody in government will touch it.
Minimum-Arachnid-190@reddit
So it’s too late ?
Fornicate_Yo_Mama@reddit
“Kiss your asses goodbye.
Farewell, and thanks for all the flowers.”
— The Bees
Source; Beeless Beekeeper trying to save “wild”bee population on a tiny island off the coast of CA. No neonicotinamides here, but tons of military-grade electro-magnetic noise. They seem to be weakened/confused by this and I see a lot of hive immunity loss in the form of much higher mite and viral infections. Of the three or four “wild” hives I’m monitoring, all survived the winter, but two had easily 50%-70% pop. loss and the other two are bouncing back from a bad, but closer to normal, 20%-30% pop. loss.
Just relaying the message for them. They’re not mad at us… just very disappointed. :(
TentacularSneeze@reddit
I wish I could speak to the alien archaeologists who discover our remains just so I can hear that we killed ourselves with EM and plastics, two things we thought were utterly benign and saturated the environment with.
digdog303@reddit
the people who notice and complain about the electronoise are thrown into the pot with qanon flat earthers :/
Suppafly@reddit
The venn diagram is just a circle.
Spik3w@reddit
cause most of them are batshit insane
TheGreekMachine@reddit
Don’t worry! USDA and EPA are on the case by….drastically deregulating…sigh.
soloChristoGlorium@reddit
We've had a natural bee colony in a tree in our back yard since we moved and have loved it. We love growing organic flowers and vegetables and are this very thankful for the bees!!
We walked out yesterday to start working on getting things ready for the grow season and saw that about 90% of the bee colony was just gone and we were terrified. We have never used any kind of chemical or pesticide or anything and refuse to do so.
We realize it could have been a colony split. To be on the safe side we decided to plant extra flowers as a, 'thank you', to the bees that stayed.
What I'm getting at is all I could think about was this article and how honestly horrifying all on this is.
I_can_get_you_off@reddit
It’s so nice to hear about others cultivating flowering plants. Thank you for taking care of the bees.
I have about 200 square feet of total outdoor space to plant on because I live in a townhouse, i have put flowering plants on about 65% of it, including 9 foot tall hedge. I wish I could get bees to move in, but I’ve only ever gotten wasps. Maybe one day…
KnowledgeMediocre404@reddit
Unless you’ve got dozens of acres of wildflowers they would be travelling to other properties to get food as well. Any agriculture in your area could be contaminating them with pesticides.
rezyop@reddit
I have identified a bee population fall off in my parents' backyard. While your statement is true, I'm not sure I expect heavy pesticide use in a 50 mile radius of my mom's house, which is all suburbia and minor commercial zones.
I don't know... how common is it for backyard gardens? Do people really do that? Surely they don't use as much as some monoculture farm somewhere. Even if your neighbor Boomer Joe 4 doors down dumps pesticides everywhere, statistically, most houses would be 'clean' enough to offset it... right?
SerpentDrago@reddit
It's the grass! People using weed and feed and all kinds of crap like that monoculture grass
KnowledgeMediocre404@reddit
If you’re in suburbia I agree with the other commenter, it’s a lack of food. They can’t use pollen from all species of flower so it would depend on how extensive the gardens around you are and what their makeup is.
Barlakopofai@reddit
I agree but at the same time it's so weird living in a normal country and having bees come say hi when the balcony basil flowers in the middle of the city while the US like "Oh you live in the patch of land that is mostly backyards? No wonder the bees are gone". The fuck are you doing to your backyards that the bees aren't able to live there...
rezyop@reddit
This has gotta be the #1 reason for areas that don't see a lot of outside spraying. I didn't really think about how the move to drought-resistant gardens also sped this up the last four years while a lot of agriculture that is allowed to stay maximally green also spray. No more viable habitats.
Merusk@reddit
No. TruGreen, Chemlawn, Joe's average Lawn Service, etc. These can potentially spray insecticide alongside fertilizer. Any one group spraying in a neighborhood can kill a bunch of bees. https://www.beesource.com/threads/trugreen.249853/
IDK about your neighborhood, but I've lived in 4 in various areas around the Midwest in my adult life and about 50% of homes had at least some sort of lawn service. Going back to childhood my parent's entire neighborhood had a service.
rezyop@reddit
Another commenter said its the mosquitos; any kind of repellent also wipes out bees. We don't get that many on the west coast US here. I didn't really think about that.
Our local 'lawn care services' are just latinos that will mow your lawn and perform general manicuring for cash only. They are generally super low tech and got understandably upset when gas mowers were banned.
earthkincollective@reddit
Those Latinos also hand spray herbicides, to their detriment along with everyone else's.
mein_liebchen@reddit
Mosquito foggers will wipe the bees out. Seven dust will kill them. Gardens can be lethal for bees in urban areas because regular people dose their gardens heavily with pesticides.
Amadon29@reddit
It's likely a lot smaller exposure level in a suburb. The biggest problem bees would have in a suburb is just lack of resources. Think of all the completely mowed lawns that have nothing on them. It's just acres of nothing for bees. And then when people garden, they're usually planting non-native flowers which native bees may not pollinate (honey bees would be okay with that though).
BigMax@reddit
The other big problem is monoculture. Sometimes areas have a ton of flowers in early April, and then nothing after that. In normal, balanced environments, there are flowers of some kind all spring and summer and even fall.
It’s why a lot of native pollinators are dying - we’ve planted so many non natives, they can’t survive.
KnowledgeMediocre404@reddit
My town has started a pro-pollinator policy where they encourage people to leave flowers in the spring (No Mow May) and don’t keep trail edges and roadsides as cleanly manicured to provide resources. We’re working on a “Leave the Leaves” campaign next to help species overwinter and propagate.
Revlis-TK421@reddit
Unfortunately, the ones that stayed may or may not have a viable queen. Don't be surprised if the remaining ones die out.
A couple years in one spot is often the best you are gonna get out of a wild hive.
That said, if the spot is good, a other swarm may show up ti use it next season.
Fwiw, a bee needs about 5000 flower visits to make a single teaspoon of honey. It's about 2 million visits for a pound of honey. A large, healthy hive can make about 100 lbs of honey in a year. Unless you are planting 200 million flowers just be aware that any amount of flowers you plant won't really make much of a difference to the bees.
Bees will range out to 3 miles or so to meet their foraging needs. Unfortunately a lot can happen within that radius that expose the bees to all sorts of insecticides, herbicides, and diseases.
Vorra mite and American foul brood are common and deadly to a hive.
Mipper@reddit
Bees normally swarm when the weather is nice, no wind, no rain, not too hot and not too cold. They usually hang around on a nearby branch (in a big ball/cone shape with the queen at the centre) for an hour or so before they leave for their new hive, but you easily could have missed them even if they were there when you went out. Once the sun is up it could be at any time up to the mid afternoon when they decide to swarm.
Makemewantitbad@reddit
Maybe you’re taking such good care of them, they expanded?
Staff_Guy@reddit
Here in MO some (no doubt PAC) entity is running ads FOR pesticides. Explaining how farmers just can't do without, or lower usage.
The cumulative stupidity is ..., well, just sad.
malleus74@reddit
Yep. That and varroa notes, wax moths... Not to mention the brood diseases.
naked_as_a_jaybird@reddit
*mites
But yeah
malleus74@reddit
Lol, gotta love autocorrect at times.
alcisathena@reddit
I also live in the Midwest, though I live in a more suburban area. I’m not sure if you’ve seen people interact with bees but as soon as they see one they start screaming and run away. If it comes anywhere near them, as the average corn juice drinking idiot probably has hfcs coating every inch of their extremities that attracts bees, they will try to kill it and act like they’re being attacked by a bear.
Honeybees.
It boggles my mind how some people can be so egregiously out of touch with nature. Might also explain the decline. They are not welcome in human spaces anymore
zuneza@reddit
Too much nic can make people do that too.
"Dad left for smokes", etc.
Professional_Hunt756@reddit
Indeed, many studies have shown that certain pesticides, especially those containing neonicotinoids (neonics), may have negative effects on bees and other pollinating insects
ShadowValent@reddit
European honey bees are an invasive species to the americas. They are not some cornerstone of the ecosystem.
awwaygirl@reddit
Is this something impacting Canada like the US? How about bees in Mexico or Europe? I know Europe has much safer standards for pesticides and insecticides…
supercali45@reddit
GG .. people still worried about 401k’s lol
Madness_Reigns@reddit
They also know exactly what's happening. They just can't say it because that offends the sensibilities of those in power and tgeir voterbase.
devinbookersuncle@reddit
It's not too late and my response is the same as fixing congress/washington: drag then all into the street and just solve the problem that way.
dwerked@reddit
We have the second amendment for a reason.
ThroatSignal8206@reddit
Welcome to the FAFO phase. We are currently in the FO stage
Metals4J@reddit
We are definitely in the FO stage, but that hasn’t seemed to stop us from cranking the FA knob up to 11.
nausteus@reddit
That's about my plan at this point. I'm not a super polluting megacorp, but I won't be able to survive societal collapse. I'm just waiting for a couple more personal life events to take place and a few more indicators that shit will hitting the fan will be more than I can handle before I take my early retirement.
GrandMasterPuba@reddit
With honey bees and insect decline more broadly, it's one of the few instances where it's not actually too late.
Insects breed on such a gargantuan scale that if the poisons killing them could be banned, their populations could be restored within a few years.
dockstaderj@reddit
Fucking Republicans....
LucyFink@reddit
Black Mirror
Odd_Awareness1444@reddit
And the stores still have mountains of Roundup on the shelves. Our home is free of any weed killers or pesticides. My small way of trying to help the pollinators.
Maleficent_Count6205@reddit
I want to preface what I’m going to say with I completely believe we are destroying the world and everything upon it and we need to fix that…now!
The honeybee we have in North America isn’t native to North America. Our native honey bee died off a long, long time ago. The current honey bee species we have came over from Europe in the 1600s. So looking at just the honey bee to see how bee populations are doing across North America is silly.
There are approx 4,000 different species of bee across North America. All of them aid in the pollination of our food, many of these species are just mm big.
I think it’s high time we started keeping better track of all bee species and not just the one we brought over from Europe.
Helpful_Finger_4854@reddit
Gonna be honest, here in Texas I've noticed there's far fewer mosquitoes since it rained and been in the 80's. While I think it's weird though, I honestly can't say I miss the little bloodsuckers, because I honestly hope they don't come back...
ebostic94@reddit
You know the Americans I am American by the way, but the Americans kinda deserve. This will be an asshole.
Bosswashington@reddit
They are putting tariffs on the fucking honeybees now?
Nano_Watchman@reddit
Our last hope is to use Nancurrency. Nano (ticker XNO). Energy-efficient money.
rubyredhead19@reddit
Always someone shilling crypto. Wtf
Gnarlodious@reddit
Santa Fe New Mexico reporting. Here on the place every one of 6 hives survived the winter. Note that this area has no commercial farming and is strongly anti-chemical.
DudeCanNotAbide@reddit
For some counterpoint, I noticed a lot of honey bees here in the southeast over the last week and I've never noticed them on my flowers before. I took it as a good sign, but, alas - anecdotes are not evidence.
Chef-Keith-@reddit
It’s the mites…
SignificantWear1310@reddit
Just in the last two weeks our weather has swung from 18 degrees above average to 11 degrees below average. I can’t imagine how confusing that must be for the bees. And apparently they don’t do well with whiplash weather like that because they come out of hibernation early, etc.
baconraygun@reddit
Well said. In my area, it's been 25-30 degree swings from cold to warm. (Measured in Fahrenheit)
coffeequeen0523@reddit
Same here in Southeast North Carolina!
3d1thF1nch@reddit
The dandelions are out, the honeysuckle are out…I haven’t seen a bee at all in two weeks. It’s really noticeable, and I try to leave them in my yard for something for them to eat when they first wake up.
coffeequeen0523@reddit
Same here. Our yard, the field around our pond and our wooded areas full of clover and dandelion. I asked my husband not to mow our yard this past Saturday hoping to give bees/honeybees an extra week to feast on clover and dandelions but we’re not seeing any bees. We reside in Southeast North Carolina. Don’t know if the bees are still dormant or forever gone.
hemdaepsilon@reddit
I blame the increase in spray applications.
Trugreen Chemlawnn for example makes a lot of money in residential areas by not using pellet or solids. But those tanks of spray require an expensive additive to reduce risk of fluids drifting nearby. They can easily "skip" that additive and increase profits.
On an agricultural scale the spray is more widespread. Precision. Agricultural promises targeted applications but we're still talking about chemicals in the air to apply.
Pesticides and chemicals are toxic enough we should never have used them in this manner, but the improvements to spray technology has had even worse results if we connect the dots between bees and spraying
zefy_zef@reddit
Seder put it best (probably not the only one), they're externalizing their losses onto the public. His point was as to why it's bad to gut government agencies, but the ones we do have aren't doing enough. We should be going the opposite direction and getting giving more power to the agencies that curb the actions of big business.
cjwi@reddit
It's time to send these woke ass bees to a Salvadoran work camp. Asian hornets work. They're the best bees I hear. Very hard workers those Asian hornets.
tibicentibicen@reddit
Maxfunky@reddit
So was a lot of context missing from what you said:
Some of your comments really don't track with the data. We know why death rates went up to like 40 to 50%. Colony collapse disorder hasn't been a mystery for at least a decade now, but when it hit the scene it got talked about a lot and when we solved the mystery nobody cared. So let me enlighten you. It's varroa mites.
These are little parasites that, relative to the size of a bee, would be volleyball sized tick on them. That's a huge stressor to a bee. It not only has to carry around that much extra weight all the time while it's being drained of essential nutrients, But there are also diseases specifically vectored to bees via mites.
So why did the mites explode? It's because commercial beekeeper started shipping their bees all around the country in semi trucks. These beehives used to be stationary. Bees used to only interact with local bees. But now they're being shipped around the country where all the bees in the country descend on the same spot at the same time of the year and you get this massive bee orgy (I don't actually mean sex here just contact between lots of various hives from all over) where they can transmit diseases to each other.
That's it. That's all colony collapse disorder is. It has nothing to do with weed killing pesticides. Not that I'm a particular fan of weed killing pesticides mind you, I just am a fan of facts. The clearest data point would be Australian bees who should be just as impacted by pesticides and even more impacted by climate change, but they're fine because until very recently, Australia did not have varroa mites and even now that they do, they don't have the same sort of agricultural bee exchange going on.
Now of course any scientist won't tell you varroa mites are the cause because in truth there is no singular cause. There are dozens of stressors on bees and many of them might also contribute in small ways, but there's pretty much no question that varroa is the largest by a factor of ten.
But here's the other context that you're lacking. Even with 40 to 50% deaths, the number of beehives has been steadily growing since about 2008 which was the peak of the CCD crisis. There are still far fewer bees than in the 1960s or whenever, but the trend is up. This last year bucks the trend and that one probably is climate change related. Just based off of all the plants I had die that were meant to be perennials In my zone, it's pretty clear that the lowest low temperatures were aberrantly low. Cold enough to kill underground roots.
That is definitely climate change right there. That's warm air displacing cold polar air causing increasingly common polar vortexes.
willitexplode@reddit
This is such an insightful response and I co-sign 1000%. Varroa mites are the devil in the details here. I’d never heard the volleyball sized tick comparison and it’s so spot on.
THAT SAID—neonicitinoids are still very bad for many pollinators in general, do wreck their nervous systems, and contribute to wild pollinator decline across other major species like butterflies, moths, flies, and wasps. Habitat fragmentation also causes major issues to local communities. Tie it all together with climate change and it’s still a nasty outlook for our bee buddies.
:(
kensingtonGore@reddit
Neonicitinoids allow parasites to get established.
We know this, Monsanto Bayer knows this. Either we stop using it as a pesticide and get lower yields, or we continue until pollinators die off and we get NO yields.
Deus_is_Mocking_Us@reddit
But until then, we're gonna deliver a lot of value to the shareholders!
Maxfunky@reddit
You're not wrong about neonicotinoids however, those pesticides aren't used to kill "weeds". I'm not saying pesticides don't play a role here but weed killers aren't really the ones that issue primarily. I mean technically you can't rule anything out as being a partial stressor, but few things compared to the stress of having that volleyball sized tick on you.
willitexplode@reddit
I didn’t mention weeds or suggest neonics compared to the impact varroa mites. Not sure where you got that. Have a great day!
Maxfunky@reddit
No, I absolutely never thought you did. I was just trying to re-emphasize that while I agreed with what you said, it wasn't undermining my response to OP on the subject of weedkillers which they had raised. I didn't want anyone else reading our exchange to be confused but apparently I confused you. Sorry about that.
willitexplode@reddit
Yikes, my bad, I see whatcha mean now, thanks :)
“My motives weren’t apparent” is also a very elegant phrase I will be adopting—thanks for that.
ElleHopper@reddit
My mom used to keep bees, and she stopped because they just kept dying every winter. Never saw any evidence in the hives of mites, but the 10+ years of winters not staying cold enough for them to stay in hibernation the whole winter definitely didn't help.
Maxfunky@reddit
I mean I'm not telling you it's just one thing, just that one thing is clearly the biggest factor. Lots of people have speculated that chronic pesticide exposure makes bees more prone to succumbing to varroa mites and that's not something I could rule out or anything. A lot of hives that fail in the winter are also just getting poor forage in the summer or have been over-harvested for their honey. They just don't have the resource to get through.
schmuckmulligan@reddit
My basic rule is that if the person hasn't been doing regular alcohol washes and mite treatments as needed, I don't wanna hear it.
I'm sure pesticides etc. are bad, but if you're not seriously addressing THE major known cause of colony failures right now, c'mon.
BokUntool@reddit
As a beekeeper, mites are not their issue this year, not even close. All the hives are similar as the last few years, since mite counts are easy to see with a mite board.
I have seen why, it's the weather. Warm/sunny high temps in the early afternoon, then hail, rain, wind etc. a couple hours later. My bee boards were covered in pollen carrying bees multiple times this season already.
Last winter/fall much of the pollinating and late bloomers were absent, and the bees were weak going into winter.
You can speculate all you want, but beekeepers are already acclimated to mites and pesticides. We are constantly monitoring and strategizing for how the mite populations change. There has not been a mite plague. I/We are seeing a different die off.
Maxfunky@reddit
Yeah but if you read what I wrote instead of skimming it, you'll find that you're actually agreeing with me. Would you like me to quote the relevant paragraph?
BokUntool@reddit
No, your verbose post had enough certainty in the first paragraph for comment.
If you can't communicate clearly, I don't need more of your copied paragraph.
"So let me enlighten you. It's varroa mites."
Maxfunky@reddit
You say that but you didn't even read the first paragraph. You merely needed to read the line before the one you quoted to know that you were taking it out of context and are in fact the one who was wrong. Three total sentences was all you had to read and you could only be bothered to read the last sentence of the paragraph.
Also nothing there was copied. I wrote you five paragraphs. This is half the length of an average news article. Are you really this illiterate?
Again within the context of the sentence before it that you were apparently too lazy to read, you would know it wasn't in reference to this season specifically. If you can only be bothered One sentence in the entire post, that's on you.
I get that you're embarrassed that you screwed up here and read it wrong but trying, to make that my fault is Trump levels of petty and immature. Grow up.
collapse-ModTeam@reddit
Hi, Maxfunky. Thanks for contributing. However, your comment was removed from /r/collapse for:
Please refer to our subreddit rules for more information.
You can message the mods if you feel this was in error, please include a link to the comment or post in question.
accountaccumulator@reddit
This is blatant misinformation and should be labeled by the mods as such.
Maxfunky@reddit
Tell me what you think is wrong and I'll happily provide citations.
AncientSkylight@reddit
This is BS, y'all. I know it looks like OP knows what he's talking about, and some of what he says is true, but there are falsehoods woven in here to make the conclusion utterly misleading.
It is true that the Varroa mite is probably the primary proximal cause of CCD, however the claim that " It has nothing to do with weed killing pesticides" is just wrong. It has been shown that even very small exposures to neonics significantly increases the bees susceptibility to a range of diseases and parasites, including the varroa.
Significantly, OPs comment utterly misrepresents the timeline of factors. Traveling hives (Migratory beekeeping) has been a standard in agriculture since the early half of the 20th century. It is not a new factor. On the other hand, neonics were introduced in the 1990s and grew in popularity leading just before CCD started hitting.
Maxfunky@reddit
Except that it was minimal until the '90s when California almonds started taking off then it exploded. Coincidentally this is right after the introduction of varroa destructor in 1987. There's actually an amazing correlation between almond consumption/ production in the United States and colony collapse disorder if you put the two graphs side by side.
Maxfunky@reddit
I mean okay. If you want to make this about technicalities. Sure. Glyphosate has been linked to decreased diversity in insect gut microbiota. While this probably not good bees it definitely doesn't kill them by itself. The average worker bee is living only a few weeks anyways so minor stressors like this are pretty much never going to be the proximal cause of death.
Now can you combine this minor stressor with a dozen others and maybe kill some bees? Sure. So in that sense, I can't tell you it has nothing to do with CCD just next to nothing.
OP is looking at a camel with an elephant and a few pieces of straw on it's back and pointing to the one of the straws and saying "Look at what killed this camel!". It's silly. Again, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike glyphosate. This just really shouldn't be one of them. It's shoehorned in here artificially.
lizardtrench@reddit
I think this also needs further context, I don't think the data is quite as rosy as 'steady growth' makes it sound. Here is a graph of USDA data up to 2018:
https://imgur.com/PcjUc1a
(Since 2018, it has similarly been up and down, from 2.6 to 2.9 million.)
Technically speaking, I think we can say it's averaging higher depending on where you start measuring from, but it appears to be a fairly weak trend.
As for varroa mites, they are definitely the most commonly reported stressor to colonies and a compelling smoking gun for the reasons you cited. That said, I don't think we can conclusively say they are the largest factor in colony collapse just yet. Being the most common stressor does not necessarily mean they are the top cause of death or dysfunction. It is also easier to identify volleyball-relative sized external mites than it is to identify pesticides or microscopic internal parasites like nosema, so there is likely some amount of overreporting going on.
PlainRosemary@reddit
Could you make this into a post? This is such an insightful comment, it deserves wider attention.
kensingtonGore@reddit
Get fucked. This is LITERALLY Monsanto taking points.
They prefer you read their bullshit and not this.
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/18/bees-insecticides-pesticides-neonicotinoids-bayer-monsanto-syngenta/
How do Monsantos phallic words taste in your mouth
Maxfunky@reddit
Even a broken clock is right once a day. Again I'm not telling you that weed killers aren't the problem, I'm just telling you they're not the problem with bees specifically. If you can't handle that level of nuance, then perhaps you should stay off the internet.
kensingtonGore@reddit
The new ones you're talking about is this - The pesticides used by Monsanto Bayer disrupt bees immune systems making them susceptible to parasites and fungus.
Their propaganda wants you to ignore and avoid the source problem - their profitable chemicals.
And you're repeating it.
If your propaganda efforts continue to be effective, Bee populations will continue to collapse and there will be no yield to harvest.
So, If you willfully contribute to the misinformation, you can get fucked.
Own_Instance_357@reddit
After college my son moved overseas to study and work, where he met his wife. They are in the visa waiting process to come to the US. I live alone now at the old family house and it is only going to become more difficult to manage as I get older. Fortunately, he really seems to want to come live here with her and raise his family here. (My DIL has no more home to go to, her country is at war and she is a refugee, so there is no issue there.)
We're zoned agriculturally and I've thought about bee keeping for a while, it's just too much for me alone. They spray in my town, but at least my neighbors seem to have those signs with bees that say "no spraying pls" ... and local honey still gets sold at my nearby farmstands. So people can keep bees here.
My kid is either going to be one of those who says "absolutely not" or he'll go head over heels for it and enjoy when the bees sting him. No sense in bringing it up before he's even here ... enough to worry about with the visas and immigration now.
But I'm really thinking about it
Swordf1sh_@reddit
I don’t know why but your comment really got to me. Maybe something about the way you framed it all. Maybe also bc I’m super empathetic and sentimental. I hope your son and his wife move home and help you with the house and you all keep some bees. Best of luck 🤞🏽
ArgonathDW@reddit
Hey, good luck, man 👍
Own_Instance_357@reddit
Thank you, I keep hope that in these anti immigration times that people like you will be welcoming
exbusinessperson@reddit
First the US comes begging for eggs. Next: everything else.
Stufilover69@reddit
Better pay up or they'll bomb you
Tangurena@reddit
That's after bombing everyone squatting on top of "our" oil. Like Canada.
UnlikelySafetyDance@reddit
But plan it over a group chat
INTPgeminicisgaymale@reddit
And do the (ahem) impressive feat of...
rockadoodoo01@reddit
There were a couple of wild hives near me ten years ago in southern Colorado. I used to put bee food out for them, and quite a few would show up. About five years ago none showed up. I looked for the hives and they were dead. Since then I haven’t seen a single bee, wild or domestic. The wild animals are almost gone too. It’s not good.
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
Again? Damn.
InitialAd4125@reddit
Ah cool ecosystem collapse my favorite/s
Prestigious-Copy-494@reddit
Plant flowers wherever you can! Even in a pot on a balcony if you have to. Yes, the bees aren't around in my flowering vine like they use to be. I miss them. They never once stung me.
strong_as_the_grass@reddit
We let our lawn go wild and this spring, our backyard is taken over with purple dead nettle. Apparently the bees love it because they are absolutely everywhere. We were going to seed the yard with clover, but this stuff has taken over and we're happy with it (plus it's free lol). I'm thinking of turning the front yard into a wildflower garden now.
taylorbagel14@reddit
Lawns suck, native biodiversity fucks!!! Do it!!! Make sure to plant plenty of native wildflowers for the local girlies and then stuff like lavender for the honeybees
strong_as_the_grass@reddit
Agree!! I also started ordering my vegetable/herb seeds and plants from a nearby supplier who has a LOT of native species! Really excited for this growing season.
Prestigious-Copy-494@reddit
I've heard about the purple nettle. But does it take over the lawn? I'm thinking of putting wild flower seeds out too in an unused flower bed.
strong_as_the_grass@reddit
It is taken over! Funny thing is I have no idea where it came from, so I figure it probably started from bunny poop. They apparently love it too, and we have rabbits in our yard every year. So maybe they ate some from a neighboring forest or something. I'm working on a vegetable garden in the side yard with a barrier to (hopefully) prevent the nettle from spreading too much.
I love the idea of wildflowers in an unused flower bed! I think Burpee sells sacks of seed specifically to attract pollinators.
purplecow@reddit
Had this article pop up in my X/Twitter feed and most of the comments that it showed me were blaming... Contrails. And big agri GMO. There were people both begging Trump to help and relieved that now he's in charge all these poisons will be cleaned from our environment. That X has turned into a bizarro world.
bernmont2016@reddit
Those conspiracy nuts are literally "old man yelling at clouds", lol. But only the skinny clouds. ;)
SignificantWear1310@reddit
Boycott Xwitter
katydid724@reddit
My yard is full of clover and I haven't seen 1 bee. 40 years ago I would be trying not to get stung because it would have been full of honey bees. It's terrifying
joeynsf@reddit
So long and thanks for all the pollen....
using_mirror@reddit
You realize all life is interconnected right?
glimmerthirsty@reddit
Overuse of pesticides.
KDubbleYa@reddit
Do we consider honey bees an invasive species? I am not trying to be shady but why are some species called invasive and others are not?
blitzm056@reddit
It's simple. Pesticides. Had a healthy beehive. Sprayed around house for mosquitoes, all the bees were dead within a couple of weeks. Learned a painful, sad, expensive lesson. We need to stop acting like it is surprising. It's the @#&% pesticides. We can either stop using the ones that kill bees or watch our crops die off. Ban them at the state and federal levels or suffer the consequences...
ItyBityGreenieWeenie@reddit
Silent Spring was published in 1962 and is still relevant.
TonyHeaven@reddit
This has been going on for years. I believe that imported queen bees , from Europe , have been essential to keeping American agriculture in new bee hives. Let's hope Europe doesn't have a problem selling queen bees to the USA , that would be disastrous for America.
goobervision@reddit
Trump has probably cut the funding and added tariffs.
alxmg@reddit
I’m currently designing a native garden for my backyard! Many places have native plant sales in the spring, but you could also simply propagate roadside plants too.
LusterBlaze@reddit
where the honey hoarders at
DaFabulousVibe@reddit
I thought the headline meant honeybees were going on a murder spree, I was so confused...
ejpusa@reddit
It’s pesticides. We want cheap food. It’s a deal we made.
That’s it. It’s not rocket science.
BigJobsBigJobs@reddit
It's the wild bees and pollinators that are really endangered.
You can BUY more honeybees.
hemdaepsilon@reddit
Anything higher than 25% is certain inability to feed the population within 10 years. At 70% it would be food failure within 5
lsc84@reddit
I was walking down the street and I saw a big sunflower covered in bees. I walked closer and realized they were all dead. Every single one, just a bunch of dead bees stuck to the sunflower.
Delicious_Injury9444@reddit
While we're dying, 'honey bee death surge' would be a good punk band name.
savagebuns@reddit
Reminds me of Mudhoney
Mechbear2000@reddit
Honey bees are not native to the US. They pose serious dangers to local bees and pollinators. Typically information not included in these stories. They are a necessary evil to mass produced agriculture.
itsatoe@reddit
Right, it's monoculture crops that require dedicated pollination by imported bees, because acres of a single crop don't have the biodiversity to host the pollinators. Permaculture farms don't have to be dependent on European bees.
Decade1771@reddit
Interesting. Where can someone read more about this? I am deathly allergic to bee stings so have always stayed away from them. But never knew that honey bees weren't native to North America. Makes me curious.
ARAR1@reddit
Ya. Everytime some one sees a bees nest, they kill it
TheInvisibleFart@reddit
This is a great time to start becoming self reliant and stopping trade
R3P4Jesus@reddit
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Here, for you.
GeoengineeringWatch.org is pleased to announce the release of our groundbreaking documentary that conclusively exposes the existence of global weather intervention operations.
Global weather engineering operations are a reality. Atmospheric particle testing conducted by GeoengineeringWatch.org has now proven that the lingering, spreading jet aircraft trails, so commonly visible in our skies, are not just condensation as we have officially been told. Who is responsible for carrying out these programs? What will the consequences be if geoengineering / solar radiation management operations are allowed? THE DIMMING documentary will provide answers to these questions and many more. This is the most complete GeoengineeringWatch.org documentary regarding climate engineering operations. Thank you for viewing and for notifying others of The Dimming film release.
The Dimmimg
Chickenbeans__@reddit
What the fuck I thought this was a dumb conspiracy
Delirium_Cap@reddit
You're right, it is
Chickenbeans__@reddit
He kind of dropped a lot though. I started watching the documentary
inpennysname@reddit
I had always equated chem trail fear with foolishness, someone help I can’t navigate this reality anymore haha
R3P4Jesus@reddit
Proof of retrofit aerosol spraying nozzles
inpennysname@reddit
I believe that weather interference happens, cloud seeding is a thing, and it isn’t a secret for example at the spy museum in dc there is an exhibit on how the us gov played with weather interference Vietnam as a war strategy. I guess I just feel like these kind of theories are distracting from things that are happening right in front of our faces and causing enormous problems. When I read the comments to the YouTube video, lots of people focusing on how the sun isn’t as bright and the weather is more cloudy and I just…what would be the overall purpose to do this? I think so much of the fuckery is not hidden that we don’t need to bend over backwards to find it. Maybe I’m being close minded but this feels like busy work, this theory.
ArrrrKnee@reddit
I'm dropping a lot right now, too. It's shit, and it's coming out of my ass. Need to see a documentary on that?
R3P4Jesus@reddit
Keep shitting dude maybe you can lose another 30 lb!!!
ArrrrKnee@reddit
31 lbs. now, thanks for asking!
R3P4Jesus@reddit
Who hurt you pal? Why you so mad? Denial is the first stage of grief. Anger is the second. You'll be ok I know it.
https://geoengineeringwatch.org/links-to-geoengineering-patents/
https://geoengineeringwatch.org/geoengineering-jets/
https://geoengineeringwatch.org/category/tree-die-off/
https://geoengineeringwatch.org/category/health/
DefactoAtheist@reddit
Yeah dude, scientific, peer-reviewed studies illustrating the umpteen dozen different ways in which we are fucked are just freely out there and available for anyone to read but there is actually this super secret, umpteen dozenth + 1 way in which we are also fucked that THE MAN is keeping from you.
If you fall for this, you'll fall for anything. Fuck me.
Chickenbeans__@reddit
I watched about 15 min of the documentary and realized it was dumb
R3P4Jesus@reddit
Speaking of dumb. Who plays dungeon and dragons?? 😯
collapse-ModTeam@reddit
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slickrok@reddit
What's wrong with you?
What a creepy freak stalking profiles.
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Delirium_Cap@reddit
D&D requires lots of brain power, so I'm sure you'll never enjoy it properly
collapse-ModTeam@reddit
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slickrok@reddit
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
🤡 🤡
SwegBallls@reddit
It's not like we've known for decades that the earth is currently going through a mass extinction event...
"Oh shit what have we done"
FREE-AOL-CDS@reddit
"Just increase the amount of hives, yeah each hive loses 85% of it's members but we just double the amount of hives and we make it up on the backend"
itsatoe@reddit
This is analogous to bailing water out of a flooding boat... while the hole in the boat is growing.
The trend suggests that the number of bees dying off is increasing.
FREE-AOL-CDS@reddit
My post is how they'll explain their solution.
itsatoe@reddit
Ah, sorry, I missed the quotes. 🙃
And yeah, that's sadly probable.
VendettaKarma@reddit
Definitely agree, in west central Texas I haven’t seen a honeybee in about 3 years and I live in the rural area with a large amount of just open fields that no one treats.
Barely even see wasps anymore.
Something drastic is definitely happening.
LegitimateVirus3@reddit
It's not "up to" it was reported that they are projecting between 70 to 100 percent death of commercial honeybee colonies.
BigTiddyVampireWaifu@reddit
Honey bees aren’t even the biggest pollinators. Butterflies account for a huge percentage of pollination in wild plants and butterflies seem to have vanished :(
thistletr@reddit
Honeybees are domestic animals. Wild bees, solitary bees, bumblebees etc are the ones we need to be worrying about. We do like honey though, so honeybees are nice too but not the ecological problem.
wordsmatteror_w_e@reddit
Honeybees pollinate too. You're off your rocker.
Eldan985@reddit
Yes, but they are too generalist to be effective pollinators for many non-commercial plants.
thurstonmoorepeanis@reddit
As i understand honeybees are more apt for pollination of common domesticated garden crops, especially ones brought over from the old world, while not being so great at pollination of native species in America. For example tomatoes are a native American crop that mostly rely on bumblebees to “buzz pollinate” which honeybees aren’t capable of.
Gimmenakedcats@reddit
Yes but honeybees compete for territory with bumblebees which is why it’s extremely irresponsible for people to have a city with tons of honeybee keepers in it.
I want both bees to survive, humans just doing their thing and destroying everything by neglect or helping the wrong way once again.
nuno20090@reddit
While i won't disagree with that, because I know nothing about the subject, they still are very close species, so if one of them is struggling so much, it would be wise to take this seriously.
Eldan985@reddit
A lot of the problems are actually quite honeybee-specific. Wild bees are mostly solitary and don't form colonies, so their problems are different.
castles87@reddit
My lilac is blooming and I haven't seen a bumblebee yet. I've had the lilac for years, I know it's time sensitive and I remember always seeing bumblebees on the bush. But so far, nothing yet. I check often, I already checked this morning. I'm hoping I'm just thinking about them a little early
poop-machines@reddit
I've JUST started seeing them in the UK. But we had a few days at like 19C already, so it makes sense they'd be out of their hives.
huitzilopochtlihontl@reddit
THIS is the truth. Amen.
vxgirxv@reddit
I hear this every single year and have for over a decade. Seems to be a trending cycle. Is it even real at this point? Seems to me it's also not just bees.
Humanist_2020@reddit
We need kits like in children of men. I don’t want to be around when I look like meat for the grill
swampopossum@reddit
It's definitely the mites. Anyone who has a hive needs to treat for them or they'll decimate even the healthiest hive
linktactical@reddit
Plant wildflowers. Support honey producers
iwatchppldie@reddit
Neonicotinoids( bug spray ) is the insect equivalent of sarin/vx. Humanity covered the world with this shit. So yeh the bugs are dying.