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Comment by pingou | Hacker News Reader

According to the article, the number of colonies is bigger than before because bee keepers simply buy more bees as replacement, but it doesn't explain where they come from.

Also: "put half the bees into a new beehive, order them a new queen online (retail price: $25 or so), and voila: two healthy hives."

Does that mean you have 100% more colonies but the same number of bees? I suppose not, but I think it would be interesting if we could see the evolution of the numbers of bees instead of the number of colonies.

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A small number of bees when placed with a queen will quickly produce a full size hive. Bee hives have a size limit, so dividing them into two smaller hives produces rapid population growth. A queen bee can lay 1000 eggs a day.

This is the most outlandish attempt at a proof of the Banach-Tarski theorem I've heard so far.

> but it doesn't explain where they come from.

Sure it does. They come from the Internet, it explicitly stated that.

Joking aside, from my understanding, the issue with bees is a combination of multiple factors, such as pesticides, disease, parasites, etc.

Those are primarily local issues. So it's perfectly feasible to find some isolated spot in the US, grow a ton of bees, and ship them across the country to wherever they are needed to make up for any local losses.

We can easily engineer around this issue, by increasing the bee population, genetically engineering them to be more resistant, wipe out parasites, or change the formulation of pesticides. It seems the market is responding by simply growing more bees to make up for the losses, which should be a viable solution in the short-term.

It's mostly pesticides.

yeah, research is coalescing around neonicotinoids being the primary culprit, as they weaken bee immune systems.

You are at least the second commentor to suggest neonicotinoids as the primary factor. I've seen them discussed elsewhere too, but cannot figure out with the modest data available how folks can state such a thing with anything approaching a reasonable level of confidence.

And that's consequential if that causes one to stop looking too early. Maybe I've missed something. Is there some persuasive evidence you can make me aware of that points to neonicotinoids likely being the primary culprit?

There's quite a few papers referenced on wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid#Decline_in_bee_p...

Thanks for the link. Yes, neonicotinoids are bad for bees, but so are lots of other things. Other than one special symptomatic consistency (aside from death), there still doesn't appear to be an especially good reason to peg most of the blame on them yet. Doesn't mean they aren't to blame in a large measure, but it doesn't appear there is any reason to think that YET. It's one of those annoying "more study is needed" situations. Several original hypothesises as to the cause of CCD have been ruled out by more study, but none confirmed yet.

The linked wikipedia article says neonicotinoids' role is being studied as a cause if CCD, perhaps in combo with other factors, but doesn't draw a clear line from one to the other. However, it does, as the parent post mentions, provide some nice references for more info.

Well-documented neurotoxicity and bioaccumulation seem good reasons to me. Of course there will always be colony collapses without neonicotinoids too. How about we stop using them until we fully understand their effects?

EU has banned their use for two years:

http://ec.europa.eu/food/archive/animal/liveanimals/bees/neo...

http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/beehealth.htm?wtrl...

> How about we stop using them until we fully understand their effects?

Because doing so would ignore the benefits they provide. The reasons we started using them over the alternatives. Their effects are reasonably well understood, enough to use them in a likely safe manner. The EU experiment (the ban) will provide another data point to inform the cost-benefit calculus.

Relying on complete knowledge of somethings effects before use is impractical. Do you know for certain that goat milk doesn't cause Alzheimer's? No? That doesn't mean we ban its production until it is better understood. Yes, this example is a a bad one, not exactly analogous, but only because I didn't take the time to think up something better. I think the point is clear enough.

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