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Comment by jfjsjcjdjejcosi | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

Humans in Africa also get honey from native bees there.

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