A cocktail of pesticides, parasites and hunger leaves bees down and out | Hacker News Reader

A cocktail of pesticides, parasites and hunger leaves bees down and out

nature.com

227 pointslnyan102 comments

I’ve been telling everyone I know. The number 1 concern we should all have are pesticides!

The number of insects have dropped dramatically and that has impacts on the entire food chain. Particularly, the ability for plants to reproduce. The pesticides themselves also make it all the way up the food chain.

Neonicotinoids have a half life of 5 years and we spray fields EVERY YEAR. So it’s building up in the supply chain. I live surrounded by corn fields and I basically only see wasps, Japanese beetles and some ants. Growing up we saw a ton of different insect species and numbers.

Finally, all these chemicals interact and frankly we have no idea of the long term impacts when combined.

> Neonicotinoids have a half life of 5 years and we spray fields EVERY YEAR. So it’s building up in the supply chain.

Have they been in use less than 10 years? Or are we increasing the usage every year? Otherwise your conclusion doesn't seem to follow.

Okay, so with a half-life of five years, whatever you spray at year zero, you get about 87.0551% left by next year.

So, let's imagine we spray just one unit per year. Year zero, one unit. Farmer Brown shows up to do his usual one-unit blast, recommended by Monsanto, but 87% of the stuff is still there.

Year two, 1.870551 units are present. Year three, 2.628408673 units. Year four, 3.288162485. By year ten, you have 5.79376654 units present.

If the half-life is really five years, you should do an initial one-unit dump, then just thirteen percent of that every subsequent year.

Presumably most of the pesticides get removed when the plants are harvested.

Some probably are still around, but if spraying less worked, the farmers would because it would be cheaper.

Not saying that pesticides aren't a problem, just saying that we're probably not just flooding our fields with more and more pesticides.

> the farmers would because it would be cheaper

As a person who just became a farmer at the start of covid, I think this is a mistaken conclusion.

Farmers are, in general, not out there a/b testing concentrations of herbicides or pesticides in their fields to find the exactly optimal level. If they're anything like most of the farmers I've met--who are absolutely really smart, well-intentioned folks--they talk to the guy at the extension office or weed control office and that guy tells them what to mix and how to apply.

If it works, the farmer is generally happy. If not, he'll complain. The definition of "works" is: the immediate problem is solved. So the extension office guy, who usually seems to be indirectly funded by Dow Chemical in some way, or just by chance seems to really love that concern's range of products, is motivated to maybe overshoot a little.

On my farm, we're doing things a little bit, uh, differently. Our food is expensive, but it's helping heal our soil and provides actual nutrition. https://mulligan.farm.

A quick scan says half-life can be up to 5 years, but also low as several days.

I don't think half-life means what you think it means. A substance with a half-life of five years will not be gone in ten years.

I know what it means, I was too lazy to do the math properly. The point was that with such a (relatively) short half-life the total amount stabilizes quickly.

Once you've hit the balance, you'll have saturation equal to 1 + 4/5 + 16/25 + 64/125 ...

It ends up summing to 5 (what a coincidence!). So 1 dose with a halflife of 5 years, applied yearly, hits equilibrium at 5x concentration.

If you buy organic, does that imply that the crops aren't treated with pesticides? What else can a layperson do?

No, there are organic pesticides. Some on them can be better (e.g. less stable) than some synthetic ones, that's all. And them being organic also guarantees that they can't be improved, in terms of stability or targeting, so that is entirely stupid.

> And them being organic also guarantees that they can't be improved

Please explain this part.

I was under the impression that certifications for "organic" labeling was a threshold thing and nothing prevents one brand from trying to be more efficient within limitations compared to another brand, as long as it is below or above certain levels.

I had in mind a relatively broad definition* from the latest Swiss public initiative on the topic. Which was forbidding any chemical alterations to the compounds already produced by plants, etc. Not really familiar with labeling requirements in the US.

* intended by organizers, not spelled in the text.

I'm European and have not heard of something like what you are alluding to. I know certain specific categories of pesticides are either forbidden (e.g. Propargite), or limited. But given your response I still do not understand what it has to do with artificial limits of "organic" labeling of certain categories of compounds, especially since it is often NGO:s which are responsible for many of these labels and their verifications.

The list of pesticides allowable in organic farming is (at least under OMRI rules) determined by naturalness, not safety. For example, pyrethrin occurs naturally in chrysanthemums, so it's allowed, even though it's highly toxic to bees. Tau-fluvalinate is a synthetic pyrethroid (pyrethrin analog), so it's forbidden, even though it's sufficiently nontoxic to bees that it's used as a miticide in commercial hives.

Synthetic pesticides are designed and screened in the same way as small molecule drugs, a long and uncertain process that's still far easier than discovering a new natural product. At least in theory, these synthetic compounds can be optimized for whatever we want. It's just that absent regulation, the commercial incentive is for better short-term yield regardless of the ecological cost.

One could imagine a certification similar to organic that forbids the most ecologically damaging practices--even if they're using natural products--and permits safer use of synthetic products. Probably a hard sell to consumers, though. I've occasionally seen produce marketed as "IPM" (integrated pest management), which isn't quite that but goes in that general direction.

As the name neonicotinoids implies, nicotine itself is a fairly effective natural pesticide. Subsistence farmers in the American Southeast used to dust their gardens with ground up tobacco. Probably some people still do.

It depends on where you live and honestly eating healthy is a little science and takes time these days. However I focus on regional regulations and specific labels. Ex. I know that we (Swiss) do not allow pesticides in late growing phases but the EU does. I know that the region I live in further limits the use and comes with their own label. Organic here does at least quarante no direct use of glyphosat (there are still small traces allowed because neighbors fields might use it). And so on. There is a lot more food I would not buy than there is that I feel ok with, but whatever it's worth it.

I know is possible to use genetic engineering to 'knock-out' a species by introducing some genes that cripple the females but allow the males to carry the bad gene forward through the rest of the population.

Making species extinct on purpose sounds bad, but hear me out. What if we do the knock-out technique on the most economically destructive pests so that we no longer need broad insecticides? We should probably only do this to pests that exclusively feed on crops and not generalists. But there are a ton of specialized pests that feed on human agriculture.

For instance, if you make the corn borer moth extinct in the wild, would you still need to spray cornfields? Or what about the Colorado Potato Beetle, the Boll Weevil, etc?

Outdoor farming is still incredibly resource intensive. As we move into an age where unsalted water becomes more precious and rare we should focus on hydroponic growing tech to preserve water. It is indoors so it wouldn’t require pesticides.

Israeli farmers have shown that crops can be grown outdoors in a water efficient manner.

How have they done that? Encapsulating the soil with a barrier layer?

The Israelis invented modern drip irrigation and use it extensively. They also make good use of low-quality water, like treated wastewater and not-totally-desalinated seawater, by developing salt-tolerant varieties and carefully optimizing plant nutrition under their constraints.

Of course they do lots of hydroponics too, for the usual hydroponic crops (tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.). The science in hydroponics and science in sophisticated soil culture aren't really that different--you'll see mostly the same chemical fertilizers, the same EC and pH measurements in the field, the same lab analyses by ICP, etc.

Some water still drains to the aquifer and is "wasted". It needs to be though, or else unwanted ions (from impure source water or fertilizer, including but not limited to Na+ and Cl-) would accumulate and kill the plant. Israel has a significant problem with salinization of their soils and groundwater, and lots of interesting work modeling that.

Pesticides are still widely used indoors. Pests will get introduced even with strong precautions (air showers at the entrances, etc.). At that point, if they're able to multiply then they will, potentially even faster than outdoors since there are no natural predators. There also tends to be less airflow, which encourages pests like spider mites.

Of course the greenhouse has advantages too--you can deliberately introduce beneficial (predatory) insects and they can't fly away, and if you do end up using pesticides then there's no risk to wild pollinators. For example, the EU banned certain neonics outdoors but still permits indoor use. It's more just different than strictly easier or harder.

I don't hate the idea of eradicating invasive pest species, but I do worry that the intervention might not work as intended.

I think the beauty of it is that we can keep an isolated unmodified population in a remote location and re-introduce them if need be. Not full extinction, just extinct-in-the-wild.

>Not full extinction, just extinct-in-the-wild

Or just "extinct where we grow crop X"

With how many insects there are of any species, there are bound to be many that have the genes to evade your genetic modification.

> The number of insects have dropped dramatically

Are you referring to the 2017 "Insect Apocalypse" paper? It has not done well under subsequent examination.

https://ecologyisnotadirtyword.com/2019/12/20/moving-on-from...

"From a scientific perspective, there is so much wrong with the paper, it really shouldn’t have been published in its current form: the biased search method, the cherry-picked studies, the absence of any real quantitative data to back up the bizarre 40% extinction rate that appears in the abstract (we don’t even have population data for 40% of the world’s insect species), and the errors in the reference list. And it was presented as a ‘comprehensive review’ and a ‘meta-analysis’, even though it is neither."

This was clear within weeks after publishing it. Years later it’s still cited or paraphrased in every article about bees or other flying insects. Sigh.

Anyone with eyeballs can tell there are far far far far far fewer insects than there were thirty years ago. This isn't a fuddable topic.

I'd prefer actual science, human memory is extremely unreliable and often tends to be self-serving.

When does preference for "actual science" become satisfied, given we on HN skeptically pick apart all presented evidence of anything? The above is in Nature for goodness sakes, is that too weak of a journal? If so I'm weaker than a weak scientist who publishes there.

I'd say entomologists should judge what is actually good science, the rest of us? We do have valid if flawed memories of more insects previously. Combined with the invasive species, widespread pesticide use, and all this evidence, I don't think it's wise to slow-walk our response to such a pivotal biological foundation's crisis.

We slow walked cigarettes, millions died. We slow walked climate, and we're on a path of worst outcomes. Shall insects be another failure of humans to respond? When do the skeptical technicians lay down their doubtful instincts and push for change?

"Anyone with eyeballs" is clearly below the threshold.

I think this is interesting because it's such a common issue on this board.

You can tell when people are requesting evidence to shut down a discussion vs. to broaden a discussion by the way they reply - if they bring in their own counter evidence and address the points being raised they're probably engaging in good faith and using evidence to find nuance.

I think it's OK to say "hey we need to really think about our usage of pesticides" and less ok to say "anyone with eyeballs can tell".

I don't recall there being more/ less insects at any given point in my life, I haven't noticed anything at all in that regard. I'm completely willing to believe that insecticide use is bad and that there are less insects, fwiw.

we're soaked. rain was in the forecast. i say it's really coming down out here, you tell me to wait for the inches measured at seatac

If you want to make policy based on the rain, yeah, I'd prefer to wait for it. Otherwise your 'really coming down out here' might be my 'light drizzle.' Especially if you've ever lived in the midwest.

Okay, go nuts:

More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

I've read it. There has been a huge backlash over that paper, from actual scientists critical of the methodology and conclusions. They make a compelling case that this one particular study should be taken with a grain of salt.

All of the backlash I've seen over the paper has to do with the precision and effect sizes measured - I haven't seen an argument, let alone a credible argument, that the effect itself is not real.

Follow-up research has confirmed that the effect is real and significant: Arthropod decline in grasslands and forests is associated with landscape-level drivers https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1684-3

The follow-up indicates that the effect sizes are greatest for agricultural areas.

This is hilarious. "Actual science", presumably meaning, "peer reviewed paper".

Science is not some elitist endeavor. It is available to all of us, to observe the world around us and form hypotheses and discuss them and test them, if we're motivated and it's possible.

This attitude is so, so bizarre. You won't believe the changes in the world around you, easily observed, are even happening unless there's "Science The Meme" being done about it.

This short youtube video succinctly explains the problem with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqEhPFIlH3U

When people say this, my main gripe is that it's used to legitimise anecdote, rather than well structured citizen science.

The key thing that separates well constructed datasets from shoddy anecdote is a keen eye for potential confounders and proper data metrics and collection protocols.

Another datapoint is dead-bugs-on-windshield. It's so many fewer than there used to be.

There are confounding factors for this observation.

Many insects move very little (like dozens or hundreds of yards) over the course of their lives and increased salt usage has increased the number of roads with seriously disturbed ecosystems along side them and width of said disturbed areas.

I'm not saying pesticides aren't the cause or aren't part of the cause but roads have all sorts of other terrible stuff that can decimate insect populations going on. The sooner we switch to beet juice the better.

Another confounding factor is requirements for increasing gas mileage. One way to do that is reduce wind resistance, which could mean a more sloped windshield with less turbulent airflow. Insects could just be diverted more effectively now without striking the windshield.

Old cars are still on the road. Even very old ones.

Owned a sleek and sporty (styled, anyway) '98 sedan, around the turn of the millennium. Just as with my parents' cars in the 80s and 90s, the windshield got splattered all the time. Had to clean it on road trips.

Owned a far less-sleek '01 minivan... from like 2015 on, not when it was new. Near-zero "ew" bug impacts, even on road trips. I'm not sure I ever cleaned the windshield at a gas pump, which used to be routine.

That’s not how science works.

No. He's referring to direct observation.

I don't now where you live, but perhaps you're not looking very hard? Where I live the wild plants, which is to say weeds, are showing absolutely no problem reproducing whatsoever and when the clover blooms there are so many bees it's uncomfortable to be outside. And while I'm no entomologist, I see far more insect species than can be counted on both hands.

No. The point is the number 1 concern is we're destroying insect ecosystems to anthropoform the world.

Pesticides are a problem, but almost always secondary to wholesale habitat destruction in order to make farmland (mostly to grow feed for cattle in this country) and suburbs. Pesticides are just a tool to make those new "more profitable" landscapes.

Modern commercial farming leaves no room for nature, and suburbans folks seem to think ants and spiders shouldn't exist. Turns out the same things that kill "pests" and "weeds" generally make it tough for the cute things we like.

We're reshaping the world, often in ignorance on how much we actually depend on these ecosystems we are destroying.

In the developed world, total acres of farmland have been shrinking for about a half century. And in North America, suburbs are usually overpopulated with cute things (e.g. deer, squirrels, raccoons), not underpopulated.

The issue IS pesticides. There is broad consensus that this is the case among experts. Harmful pesticide overutilization is a LOT more practical to fix than getting rid of farms and suburbs.

Since we bought our house, we're saturated in ads for pest control companies who want to spray our entire property to kill bugs. It's unbelievable that this is actually legal.

I think that the use of pesticides should be strictly limited to acute infestations -- or small specific things like a barrier placed on the foundation of the house for termite prevention.

A time when cities had trucks drive around dousing entire neighborhoods in pesticide is well within living memory.

That's definitely still a thing in Michigan where I grew up. There are county departments dedicated to mosquito control.

Yep, it's just lovely living in an apartment complex that sprays poison everywhere on the property every month.

It is not just pesticides. We are killing all flowering plants around us that are not crops or garden flowers.

Bees do not care whether it is a weed or crop. But they do care that there is always something flowering. When there is little variety in plants around bee nest they can't pollinate entire season but rather most of the time there is very little to pollinate and then suddenly there is too much and they can't keep up and make good use of it.

> Neonicotinoids have a half life of 5 years

This is nonsense. When exposed to light, which most of it is, the half-life is 39 days. It may last 1 year in the soil.

Any claim that makes farmers stupid or wasteful is immediately suspect. They are neither. They can't be on those margins.

The upgoing issues people have with wheats could be linked to the pesticides and not the wheat itself. (According to a recent documentation from Arte) I personally believe the reason I can't drink beer today is glyphosat. The more I can be sure it's glyphosate free the less likely I get a headache.

Honestly one of the worst things we face these days in my opinion

> Managed high-density bee colonies for crop pollination are associated with these pollinators being at risk of disease and parasite infection

I think, unfortunately, when most people hear about bees being at risk, they think only of domestic honey bees (which are not at risk). A lot of the solutions proposed to "save the bees" are therefore counterproductive.

Every few months I briefly entertain the idea of keeping honey bees here at our small farm. And then I start reading through all the start-up material and read about it and quickly become unconvinced of the idea. I would rather support our native pollinating insects.

Too many pest problems. Too much labour. And I always come to the conclusion: I'd rather encourage native pollinators for our area. Honey is a neat crop, but not necessary and not something I suspect I could make money from anyways.

So yeah, for me it's now becoming: how I can I create more habitat for my native bees and protect them from the cash crop agriculture that's on both sides of me?

Install things resembling 'bee hotels' everywhere you can. Very low cost, potentially might be of great benefit. I was very surprised to see a few solitary bees using the ones that we put in our garden.

Then plant a patch of bee-friendly plants, like wildflowers and clover.

Also, you don't need to take the honey from a beehive. I don't, I just keep them because I like honeybees. Doesn't reduce all of your upkeep concerns, but does decouple it from needing to achieve an outcome, which can take reduce some mental stress.

For sure, right now outside it's bee heaven because I have a lot of cucurbits in flower all over the gardens (uh, anybody want cucumbers and pumpkins? Crap.) And there's a lot of comfrey which has gone crazy all over my farm and the bees seem to really be into that as it pretty consistently flowers over the whole summer.

Around this time of year I put buckwheat in as a cover crop, that way it flowers right before frost and then dies back before I plant garlic. When there's a field of buckwheat in flower it's absolutely mental how busy the insects are.

The bee hotels we have typically attract non-native mason bees which are later parasitized by parasitoid wasps. It may be better to encourage plants that have pithy stems and leave them over winter (if you are in area with winter) so that bees can use them to nest.

Planting wildflowers with genetics native to your region is among the best things you can do to support pollinators.

We had one of those bee hotels up. It turned out to be a buffet for the parasitoid wasps. There seems to a reason that mason bees, etc. are called 'solitary'.

We've currently got Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) and Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium dubium 'Little Joe') blooming. They are covered in honeybees and all kinds of others I've never seen before.

> Also, you don't need to take the honey from a beehive.

How do you manage this? Done they run out of space and swarm? I have one that I took 7 boxes from (somewhere around 100kgs of honey) and I also split it during the season to stop them swarming - they grew so fast. If I hadn’t there would have been swarms every few weeks.

As a relatively new first time home buyer, I've found lawn care to be awful. Maintaining one actively harms the local ecosystem by removing native plants and replacing it with a monoculture, non-flowering, invasive, water intensive grass that isn't even allowed to grow to full height (in many cases).

I've started a plan to overtime dig up the yard and replace it with flower beds/gardens with native plants. The first bed I did this spring, and the native bushes I planted are now flowering. I've never seen a small garden attract so many pollinators: honey bees, bumble bees, pollinating flies, solitary wasps. It was really rewarding seeing all the different insects/species being supported by them.

Plus the bushes look great and require almost no maintenance for their care once planted (some weeding throughout the summer, and mulching every couple years probably).

Having 6.5 acres I just cannot avoid grass. The alternative to grass is labour. I already have too many gardens (half of my property is wooded tho so that's ok). But I have no interest in "lawns". I just "let" a lot of clover, creeping charlie, plantain etc grow. Or rather, I make no effort to maintain it other than mow. So I just try to be strategic about when I mow to avoid toad and bee death.

If you don't mow for long enough, you'll end up with more woods. =)

Have you thought about meadow mixes with native beneficial flowering plants [1]? There is some planning and expense to get it established, but once established your only maintenance is cutting it down once a year. In the long run it'll save you significant time.

[1] https://www.ernstseed.com/product-category/uplands-meadows/

I’ve looked into this myself and you should be careful planting “meadow mix.” Make sure the listed seeds are not invasive species. Otherwise you’ll potentially be introducing noxious weeds into your yard.

https://www.washington.edu/news/2002/04/18/wildflower-seed-m...

A meadow that is mowed once or twice a year can harbor a large variety of species and look really nice too. The problem are monoculture lawns, not grass.

In my climate (great lakes region) mowing only twice a year results in waste high plants full of ticks and sumacs growing up where I don't want them.

So I mow the front area and common areas about once every week and a half during peak growing season, and bush hog the back field about once every month and a half making an attempt to mow around things like milkweed and beneficial flowering plants.

I wonder how much of the decrease in native bees is due to the trend of people keeping honey bees. Flowers have only so much nectar and pollen. A honey bees could be consuming most of the available food for miles from the hive. I have never seen this possibility mentioned. Most people thinking of getting a single hobby hive, I get the feeling, are generally nature loving people. I would guess that if they knew that their hive would decimate the local native flower visiting insect population they would not want one.

I dunno what you're reading. Or maybe it's your location.

I've got friends who make a good profit selling honey from their remote plots of land, going there a couple times a month.

They say it's a great side business and the bees do all the work.

And indeed, from what I've seen it's just a bunch of old school wooden hives in the middle of an unkept field.

The weird thing is many people don't know that the European honeybee the only bee we humans get honey from is an invasive species in the Americas.

Humans in Africa also get honey from native bees there.

The European honeybee isn't even the only domesticated honeybee. There are also wild honeybees that produce honey, like the Himalayan giant honey bee, though it's quite a bit more expensive. IIRC there are eight honeybee species and dozens of subspecies

> European honeybee, the only bee we humans get honey from

Apis mellifera is the main, but not the only species. Asian, African and Australian people harvest also wild honey from local species of Apis.

Mayans domesticated also a second type of honey bees that are stingless and native from Neotropics. They are breed from Mexico to Argentina. Each hive can produce small amounts of fine Melipona honey that is acidic and rich in fructose. Those are 100% native american honey bees.

Asians finally culture a third genus of tiny honey bees producing Trigona honey.

I came across a video[1] where Paul Stamets and Steve Sheppard were experimenting on ways to save bees using mushrooms. Wonder how much effort it would take to implement it worldwide or if its even practical to implement on a world scale.

[1]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_lqIUlON1s (5.38mins)

This is worth promoting, because lots of folks don’t know about it yet. Beekeepers take note! This video is also MUCH shorter than Stamets’ own talks, so if you want more details a search on “Paul Stamets bees” will get you more statistics.

The results appear to be fantastic at preventing colony collapse disorder. And the hypothesis for why it works is just complex enough to make sense in an ecosystem: varroa mites aren’t directly killing bees, but due to pesticide use the bees are more vulnerable to the viruses/infections that the parasitic mites carry. Bees seek out certain fungus mycelium to lick in order to get access to their antiviral and antibacterial properties. Stamets’ solution (literally) is to put a small amount of those harvested chemicals into the sugar water that beekeepers feed their hives.

As for practicality, growing mushrooms is very very easy to do at scale for many known species, IIRC this includes most if not all of the species Stamets has found to be beneficial.

My only qualm is that it cannot address the threat of extinction to our US native and solitary bee species. So I think it could be a necessary but not sufficient step if keeping native pollinators extant is a goal.

I was at an exhibition in Toronto, Ontario over 10 years ago and almost jumped out of my skin when I heard a beekeeper casually exclaim that "wild bees don't exist in Ontario any more".

I pressed her on it and she said that sure some do still exist but hardly enough to really do any pollinating of much of anything.

I used to see honeybees all the time growing up. Been bit by plenty.

Now I am hard pressed to find a single one if I look.

Honeybees are never really "wild" in Ontario. They're a European / Asian species. I don't think they naturalize well here, nor should they, they're invasive if they do. I am sure there's the odd wild colony here and there, but I doubt they last long.

That said, there's honeybees all over my farm right now (Hamilton area) going crazy on my cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins and zucchinis. And they're not mine, I don't keep them, and I don't know of any neighbours here who do.

Earlier in the year it was bumblebees (oh they're so cute!) but right now just lots and lots of honeybees.

Well that's a relief!

Maybe I've just spent too long in the city!

I remember seeing a segment by David Suzuki I think about how bee populations are actually healthier in some respects inside urban areas than they are in many rural areas, due to the spread of large scale monocrop cash crop agriculture. Backyards in urban areas combined with parks are in some ways more diverse than a lot of the midwest/great lakes cash cropped region at this point :-(

I’ve lived in to “garden districts” and I always shut my trap when population collapses are discussed because in my area everything goes great.

I let an area go fallow last year and I’m still trying to identify some of the insects I saw. Lots of parasitoid wasps. This year it’s smaller and the weather is drier and hotter so the flowers I believe are little late. Also because it’s hot I’m and there’s more things to look at and do, I’m spending less time observing. It does still feel like this might be a worse year than last, but in this area at least I know there’s a reservoir of diversity than can still be cultivated.

Feral colonies tend to die out within the season where I am (New Zealand). The mite load gets too high without treatment, and it causes a crash. Seeing an untreated hive in late autumn is very depressing. I’ve nursed one of mine back to health this winter, after treating it just like the rest, but finding roughly 100 mites per cup of bees (approximately 250 bees). I treat once it passes 3 per cup of bees.

Once you get numbers that high, bees with deformed wing virus are stumbling about. Dead, starved bees can be seen in cells and mites can be seen running about. The larvae are dying from starvation or cold due to there being too few nurse bees. Wasps and other bees are robbing the weak hive and debris is all over the floor. It’s horrible to find but satisfying to fix (when you can).

I've never used pesticides or herbicides on my lawn for 20 years. When the flowers are out, there's a constant hum of bees.

The bees never bother me, and I avoid bothering them.

I had to get rid of a hornet's nest, though. They'd come after me like Me109s when I'd just walk by.

I am amazed at the imagery of humans as invasive destroyers of the earth. There is nothing more depressing than the knowledge of our killing everything in a literal war against other species with bees as collateral damage.

I love how society is ignoring the bluntness of the situation.

If bees go down, we go down.

Simple as such. All of our food supply depends on flowering plants. Without the workforce to distribute pollen, no seeds will grow. Without seeds, no new plants will grow. Without new plants, we have nothing to eat. Nor does our meat stock.

If I was to go dark, I’d say every problem contains it’s own soliton…

> If bees go down, we go down.

The great majority of crops are wind pollinated, not insect pollinated. So this is not entirely clear.

You have a point. There are wind pollinated plants.

It is not entirely clear though how effective the pollination would be for those plants without bees.

But these crops do require bees. Coffee is one of them! Just saying.

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

Why should bees have anything to do with wind pollinated plants? The plants are not optimized for attracting insects or depositing pollen on them. So, no, I don't think these plants require bees. Coffee has actual insect-attracting flowers and is clearly insect pollinated, unlike the major staple crops.

From your link: "Most staple food grains, like corn, wheat, rice, soybean and sorghum, need no insect help at all; they are wind or self-pollinated."

Yeah that was a big thing a decade or so ago. Then it switched to global warming, then climate change. Old news don't make money, and that's what's important.

Well shit now I’m depressed.

Interestingly, Quillette published an article last week, suggesting that the concerns about the insect crisis are overblown:

https://quillette.com/2021/07/25/the-insect-apocalypse-that-...

They cite many decent sources that seem to corroborate this, though none as respectable as Nature.

What's interesting about the Nature news article is that it very carefully avoids making any definite claims of what is going to happen if things stay the same. The author points out that pollinators are important to the ecosystem (true, of course) and that they're "under threat", which seems intended to imply that the stability of the ecosystem itself is under threat. But no explicit claims about the impact of on the ecosystem at large are actually made in the article.

As a layman, I'm not sure what to make of this. At this stage, it seems like these studies are mostly of interest to researchers, and there is no real need for the general public to worry about "A World Without Bees", yet that's probably going to be the popular interpretation anyway.

The Quillette itself has quite the reputation of being an untrustworthy source. The article may be well cited, but I'd caution anyone reading this to think critically and do your own research (on the topic and The Quillette).

The Media Bias Chart puts Quillette at about the same level of reliability as FiveThirtyEight. A bit higher than CNN. A bit lower than The Atlantic.

https://www.adfontesmedia.com/

How did you determine that Quillette is an untrustworthy source? If you want to convince people, you have to give arguments, not just make statements of facts without anything to back them up.

Personally I don't consider Quillette a source of unbiased truth. Articles are typically written by a single author that has biases of their own, and the quality of argumentation and reputability of references cited varies greatly. Despite that, I feel like it's useful to read about counterpoints to popular narratives. This helps separate out the beliefs that people agree on and the ones that are in dispute.

For example, on the topic of insect extinction, it seems like both sides agree that:

  - Habitat destruction reduces the prevalence of pollinators in human maintained land.
  - No species of bee is at risk of going extinct.

It's telling that my comment was downvoted without any comment explaining what was wrong or bad about it. That confirms to me that people want to believe certain narratives in spite of available evidence, and it shows why alternative media like Quillette are absolutely crucial to allow unbiased people to inform themselves on both sides of the issues before forming a conclusion.

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