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I love what your cousin did, but there’s a big difference between that and beekeeping. Not even the same types of bees. The bees kept for honey / wax production and pollination are more like livestock than “nature.”

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Exactly like livestock. If you take a look at the family tree of comercial honebee queens (yes, one exists, breeders track lineage) you will find that there are lots of loops and backtracks. Basically, lots of inbreeding. Bees are bread for 1) Production capacity. 2) Easy handling

The problems that beekeepers have been seeing the last 10 years may be in part a problem of genetic diversity.

Thats not the main story though: Wild bee populations (along with nearly all other insects) are having a bad time too. Habitat loss and pesticides are thought to be the reason.

Beekeeping may even be a contributing factor to some wild populations decline due to competition over ever more scarse resources.

My point was that if the goal is to "save bee populations", as the article claims, then we can do that by providing the natural habitat that bees need.

Or we could just stop killing them with pesticides.

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