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Comment by headsoup | Hacker News Reader

I think the concern with this is that it seems to treat the hive as a machine and not a variable natural system.

What does it do to bee evolution to take away their instincts and ability to self-regulate their hive ? What impact does that have on how the bees measure the inside and outside environment?

It would be interesting to know what the non-chemical mite treatments are. Most are mechanical, so I can only imagine it applies powdered sugar or removes drone brood or something?

I also hope it leaves a substantial mass of honey in the hive so the bees have sufficient sustenance over winter and into spring so sugar water is not needed.

There's already too much interference without understanding in the bee industry, automating things is only going to eventually reduce knowledge much further, but I can appreciate the goals and effort at least.

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> What does it do to bee evolution to take away their instincts and ability to self-regulate their hive ? What impact does that have on how the bees measure the inside and outside environment?

Wouldn't this take at least a few centuries of continued use to actually change something via evolution? Unless all your bees are dead in 2 years, obviously.

Bees only life 2-4x longer than fruit flies, and fruit flies "evolve" resistance to stressors in 8-9 generations (a month).

So I'm not sure why bees couldn't have some minor changes within a year. But I'm also skeptical that's inherently a bad thing.

A generation of bees is defined by the procreation of colonies / queens, not the life of individual worker bees, since they are eusocial. The queen bee lives for 3-4 years, and establishment of new colonies (swarming) can happen around once a year. I would guess 9 generations of bees would probably be 9 years at a minimum.

You are absolutely correct, unless the queen is actively managed by the beekeeper. Commercial beekeepers will have a queen for half that time, and then replace her.

A common symptom of today's society, thinking so short term.

Should we consider these systems are only in place for 10-20 years, are assume their use will grow so we certainly want to make sure we're not evolving less robust bees.

I mean a generation of bees takes atleast a year since only the queen is really reproducing, the worker bees themselves aren't exposed to any evolutionary pressure since they can't reproduce. (I guess they are by proxy, once their queen dies so does their lineage)

Although individual bees don’t live very long, all bees in a hive are from eggs laid by a single queen. So genetically a generation would be a hive. IIRC hives swarm (i.e. procreate) roughly once a year.

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