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Comment by jfoutz | Hacker News Reader

Losing bees would suck so bad. Lots of plants co evolved, requiring pollinators. Orchids are the weirdest, with special moths unique to them [1]. But so much stuff depends on bees. A whole bunch of kinds of fruit trees, different kinds of beans, even celery.

Hand pollination is possible, of course, but that seems like such a pita. Perhaps it's possible to automate.

We have a perfectly good, self optimizing system that constantly moves to optimality. If we could just lighten up a little, not push quite so hard, or even just do localized trials of intensive use pesticides and fertilizers, we could find a balance of what the system can support.

Either go slow and look for local optimizations that are then distributed widely, or engineer immunity, or both.

Ugh. I guess if it was easy, it wouldn't be a problem.

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> Hand pollination is possible, of course

You must be kidding. I can't think of many things that would less possible to do by hand.

We have 10 acres which is mostly in manuka (i.e. manuka honey), spaced a metre apart from each other. When I stand next to any one of those trees and watch the bees flitting hither and thither doing their thing, I am just amazed by nature.

It's been done by hand in China. Not sure if we can replicate that in the west though.

They were actually better at it than the bees from memory.

Wage costs I'm sure would be an issue. Sounds like a crazy idea, but can't we just stop using pesticides that have provably been shown to harm a critical part of our food chain? I don't particularly care if Bayer loses profit, or if I have to pay a more realistic price for fruit and veg.

> can't we just stop using pesticides that have provably been shown to harm a critical part of our food chain?

We could, but there is money lost in the process. Both for the people who produce, but also consumers. This needs regulation to become a reality.

You never know, someone might come up with a mini-drone to do it at some point in the future...

Something something Black Mirror.

It might even self replicate into intelligent colonies ...

Vanilla is hand pollinated in the Indian Ocean Islands (and I suspect that it's the case everywhere in the world outside of Mexico).

Great, how many tons of vanilla do we consume every year?

Enough for proving than human pollination, though not optimal, is possible.

In one small edge case. I doubt it would be as easy to pollinate everything by hand.

Gotta love HN comments.

"We could hand pollinate, but that would really suck."

"OMG how could you say that, hand pollination would be awful!"

"Would really suck" is a bit of an understatement.

But on the upside, >= 80% labor participation rate!

You're right, I shouldn't have made that understatement. What I actually meant was "impossible" instead of "not that easy".

It's not even an edge case. Almost all of the worlds' vanilla flavor is synthesized artificially.

The best example of hand pollination is China where the entire bee population is basically decimated. Almost all of Chinas' farms ALREADY use hand pollination.

Soy is self pollinating.

Corn, rice and wheat wind pollinate (along with a lot of other grains).

So most calorie production doesn't depend on insect pollination. Vegetables and fruits tend to though.

Why even is it under discussion. Just stop harming the bees.

When they are gone, so are we.

Bigger, more profitable yeilds is not what we should be focusing on. Saving the bees and humanity in the process is slightly more important imho

Pesticides are not enough to explain all the harm to bees. Fungus and parasites can destroy colonies too. We have to consider how to live without as many bees as we have now, because we don't know how to save all the bees.

The right thing to do is it wait until all the conclusive evidence is in. It is anti-science to not think about the corporate bottom line.

It _may_ not be caused by the pesticide, changing or stopping the use of the pesticide could not be necessary and then we would have accidentally saved the world while having less profit.

I get that this post is sarcastic/satirical, but it still feels like you're disagreeing with me?

> Pesticides are not enough to explain all the harm to bees.

How do you know this? Because of the possibility (and it will always exist) of something else able to harm bees we should take no action?

> "we don't know how to save all the bees"

Is this forgone conclusion? Sounds like you are begging the question [1]

I am reminded of, http://i.imgur.com/couhw4k.jpg

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

I'm not saying the bees will definitely die off. I'm saying we don't know. We need to be prepared in case it happens.

Edit: I definitely didn't say that we should take no action.

Edit2: If you're asking "what else has been killing bees en masse", here's a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

I am sure we agree, just not the delivery.

I can't believe the idea that humanity depend on bees.

Sure, no more bees would be a very, very bad news. But humans are a pretty hardy specie. First, we are omnivores. Second, we have conquered the whole planet and live in huge numbers. And third, we are really smart. Besides cosmic scale events, I don't think of many scenarios that could damage humanity beyond recovery.

As far as i know, no, humanity won't disappear when bees would do (even though I have seen people claiming it). Sure, some plants might solely depend on bees for pollination, but there are also plants which don't and there are also other pollinators. See https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/30495/do-bees-p... for example:

    The authors of the FAO analysis concluded that the proportion of global food production
    attributable to animal pollination ranges from 5% in industrialized nations to 8% in the developing world.

That being said: it is pretty hard to predict waht would happen suppose there were no bees at all. I doubt it would be nice though.

Lets say that millions of people would die without bees then to put things into context.

Physically possible? Sure. Economically and logistically possible? Doubtful.

Not even physically possible.

Naturally Harvested vanilla currently can go for $600 dollars a pop. Although the plant was originally from Mexico, 80% of the worlds' natural vanilla is now harvested in Madagascar.

It is highly unlikely any of you have tasted "all natural" vanilla as 99% of food products in the super market utilize an artificial version of the same critical flavor compound found in the plant: vanillin.

Vanilla plantations do not have the capacity to satisfy the worlds' demand with or without insect pollination.

I can't say as I've paid much attention and I'm sure the majority of ice cream is made from artificial vanilla, but:

Vanilla beans appear to be about $6-7 each retail and $4-5 wholesale according to these random websites, despite there apparently being a bean shortage currently:

https://www.beanilla.com/vanilla/vanilla-beans

https://www.amadeusvanillabeans.com/store/one-stop.php

Additionally, Haagen-Dazs, a mass-market brand, offers ice cream with real vanilla:

https://www.haagendazs.us/products/2474/ice-cream/vanilla-be...

I sincerely doubt that it's "highly unlikely" that most people have tasted real vanilla in their lifetimes.

I also sincerely doubt that it's "highly unlikely" that most people have tasted real vanilla in their lifetimes. We are in total agreement here because I never said "lifetime" I meant highly unlikely that people have tasted real vanilla in the vanilla product that they buy from the super market. I thought the 99% statistic made that clear... Apologies for not being more detailed, but please don't put words in my mouth, I never said "lifetime."

Also thanks for specifying the price of individual beans. If you calculate the price per pound you will see that it fluctuates,.. last I heard they were $600 per pound. Just to let you know, when people go shopping for vanilla beans, most people don't buy one bean at a time, they buy it by weight because each bean can have a different weight, FYI.

Another weird and fascinating co-evolution of plants ant their pollinators is the genus Ficus (e.g. edible fig plants). The tiny wasps that pollinate the fruit actually die inside it, while a new generation is hatched, mates, then the males burrow a tunnel out of the fig and die, why females continue the cycle.

While true in terms of how they initially evolved, in terms of how they are cultivated, figs don't necessarily require pollination by wasps (or at all). Parthenocarpy, the bearing of fruit without pollination, was probably first cultivated in fig trees thousands of years ago, and is still common today. Some fig cultivars do require pollination to bear fruit, but many don't.

> While true ...

This just broke my brain.

I think it's time for me to go to bed...

good one, I skipped right past not even noticing it.

It's so amazing that we all think differently :)

How can you go to bed if you're still stuck in the loop?

Luckily he had his watchdog timer enabled, and so was able to detect the tight loop and soft reset.

We can always just replace bees with robotic replacements as soon as technology allows. What could go wrong?

Need for more processing power, more manufacturing units, more electricity.

However it's already a self-sufficient efficient eco system only if we could stop deliberately destroying.

Just CRISPR existing bees to be more resilient.

Reference to an episode of "Black Mirror"

>What could go wrong?

What happens when birds try to eat the fake bees? What happens when they break? Do we just leave them there? What would their batteries made of? Any dangerous material Lithum is not something you want on your water supply

>What happens when birds try to eat the fake bees?

That's why we need robotic birds.

But what about the cats who eat the fake birds?

Equip the fake birds with laser pointers.

When wintertime rolls around, the cats simply freeze to death.

When are the androids and electronic sheep coming?

I personally want more lithium in the water supply. It has been shown to reduce crime, suicide and all cause mortality. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579 https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/opinion/sunday/should-...

Did you see the Black Mirror episode, "Hated in the Nation?"

Yes, my comment was in reference to that. :)

There's no science that says any part of the Earth-human system "constantly moves to optimality". Like, literally any part. It's an out-of-control rollercoaster that we may or may not be able to steward to our liking. "optimality" is a human construct.

I agree, and would extend that to the earth system in general. The universe does not care for good, bad, optimal, or suboptimal; the universe simply is.

Darwin might disagree.

Perhaps you can say evolution is accidental, without intention. Quite a happy accident in my opinion.

A billion years of living things eating each other. Quite happy, indeed.

Evolution does not necessarily move towards optimal systems, by any definition. It may find local optima, but the process has no guarantees it's moving towards a global optimum.

I am guessing your downvoters have never heard of mass extinction events.

EDIT: Here.... let me google up an example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event

I think steward/stewardship was a good choice of word on your part there

How would you define "optimality"?

Consider: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_power_principle

Optimal for whom? May be it does move to optimality, but not for humans, so human science does not find it.

Honey bees aren't native to North America at least. If they went extinct, native plants would be fine.

It's likely that bumblebees are equally affected.

Well, sort of. Bumblebees are probably as susceptible as honeybees, but native bees will preferentially eat from native plants. If most farmers aren't spraying many native plants, the exposure will be less.

> ...but native bees will preferentially eat from native plants.

Do you have a source for how significant this factor is? I would like to believe it, but it sounds a lot like wishful thinking.

Not really; my source is a lecture at a beekeeping meetup (where the lecturers range from top academics to 'a little bit crazy'). I believe the study in question was trying to assess how honeybees, an invasive species, impacted native bee populations; the study found little impact, and attributed it to the preferential feeding. (The replanting of large swaths of America with invasive plant species, such as wheat, presumably does have an impact on native bee populations.)

I'd also note that many native bees also have a much shorter lifecycle - they will be active for a very brief time at a very specific time of the year, when their target plants are flowering, and then they lay their eggs, which will remain dormant / develop slowly for nearly the full year, to hatch again at the appropriate time. This means that you can successfully avoid killing them by timing your pesticide application to avoid flowering plants. Honeybees, on the other hand, are active year round (though confined to their hives in the winter).

A larger threat mentioned in the talk to native bees was actually global warming. Many native bees operate in narrow bands of latitude, only going so far north and south. With the increases in average temperature, we're seeing the southern border of many native bee species move north ... but for whatever reason, not the northern border. I'm not sure why that would be (maybe there are plant species they depend on which spread too slowly?), but it creates a worrisome picture of their habitat being squeezed out of existence.

Bumblebee colonies are also much smaller than honey bee colonies.

A bit but nowhere near as much. Native bees have many advantages. They have vastly more genetic diversity and there are several species. Farmers don't transport them around the country and around the world spreading disease and parasites much faster. And their hives aren't often messed up by humans. And they are better adapted to this environment.

Honeybees are suffering from multiple problems including outbreaks of disease and parasites. Even without pesticide they would be doing bad.

Anecdotally bumble bees are a very common sight here. And I'm surrounded by fields that are sprayed often.

Bumble bees don't pollinate some plants as they are too big - their size also makes them better at pollinating other plants.

What % of the native plants are edible?

I'd define as "native" anything that was around before the Europeans showed up. Corn, potatoes, many kinds of beans, tomatoes. Those were all domesticated, and I don't know how you'd count them as a percentage.

Good classification... and point...

It would be interesting to know "If I were to survive 100% only on native (pre-EURO/Colonizers) food-stuffs, what would my diet look like?"

Don't forget too meat - much if the meat we eat depends upon pollenated foodstuffs - if we were to raise cattle, sheep and chickens only on grasses and local foods we'd likely have far lower heads of animals per farm and higher costs (which I'd argue for many would be a good thing, but for those who can't afford it, it would be devastating)

From what I've read, grains and soybeans are both self pollinating, so the meat supply is safe, so long as the Haber process holds out.

I found this interesting page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated...

Looks like corn, wheat, soybeans, and potatoes, are safe. So you can still have your burger, fries, and Coke. ;-)

"Honey bees" is not usefully descriptive. Please elaborate.

Actually it is. The European, or Western, Honey Bee, Apis mellifera

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_honey_bee

Right. Even if you include all the other Apis species, none of them are native to North America.

native species in north america don't comprise much of what people in north america eat.

Those foods are pollinated by livestock bees, not wild bees. In a livestock setting, bee colony pressures are manageable, and are an economic concern, not an existential environmental concern.

Oh, thats okay then. Totally. Nothing to see here folks, North America is going to be JUST FINE!

Nobody said anything about honey - just bees. The only fine we should be talking about is the fine for what these people have already done. There would obviously be and has been a massive deleterious effect from the loss of so many pollinators. Monsanto's shareholders and other like minded criminals should fined out of existence as a warning to others who would seek to destroy our world for profit. Show absolutely no mercy and go after even private holdings for good measure. Change the law if needs be and act retrospectively. The world must act in concert against the cynical and greedy polluters be they corporations, individuals or states.

What about the non native farmed plants? And the bees that aren't native are in steeper decline than native ones because they aren't farmed.

Oddly, I happened to have just read something which stated that roughly 2/3 of what bees pollinate in the U.S. are almond crops.

A quick Google reveals that almonds do indeed require a lot of bees, in addition to water.

There is essentially no current risk that almond farmers will lose access to the livestock bees that pollinate their crops.

Well, I wasn't claiming there was, but not quite sure what to infer from your comment.

I mean, I know (from recent reading) that there's a fairly intensive operation to maintain hives exclusively for almond farming. Are you saying these are not affected by CCD, neonics, or whatever?

CCD manifests itself as greater overwintering losses to colonies. Bee farmers have lots of colonies. They can split colonies and buy new queens. It's not like Dutch Elm disease; it doesn't kill all the bees.

I see. So are you saying that the "bee problem" is overblown and we can farm our way out of it?

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