Bees struggle to find flowers because of air pollution | Hacker News Reader

Bees struggle to find flowers because of air pollution

birmingham.ac.uk

265 pointsgeox39 comments

Warning: anecdote to follow. Data set: n=1. Not a peer-reviewed study. Just a completely irrelevant observation by a completely irrelevant HN poster.

But, yeah, I'm inclined to believe this. I live a few hundred meters (yards in Freedom Units<tm>) from two major highways.

Last year, at the tail end of the pandemic-induced lull in traffic, my flowers would attract groups of over 20 bees, easily, every day.

This year, with similar weather, pretty much the same flowers, and definitely the same location, it's a good day if I see 4 individual bees.

So, the answer 'air pollution' to the question 'what changed' seems at least likely?

Maybe the bees just don't like traffic and decide not to come to your particular establishment because there are easier places to get to?

On a slightly more serious tack, traffic causes not only air pollution, but air currents are also changed. Noise is also significantly higher. I have no idea about a bee's hearing, just expanding highway traffic's effects beyond air pollution. We saw USGS seismographs showing the decrease in vibrations with the pandemic's decrease in traffic. Humans have an impact on the environment in so many ways that go unacknowledged/not understood.

I think there's a very good chance you're right. But!

Unless you know where the bees are coming from another very likely scenario is the colony just died. A newly established wild hive has only like a 20% chance to survive its first winter so if that's the first summer you saw them that likely explains it.

If you're near two highways it's likely you're in a fairly dense area and feeding a nearby beekeeper's hives. But a lot of beekeepers are hobbyists and like all hobbies, people give up on beekeeping all the time. Even if it was a managed hive a likely explanation is that the colony simply isn't there anymore.

Because its hard to predict the wacky weather here in the UK, and not knowing if the next time we cut the lawn might precede a period of hot weather, we have taken to cutting the lawn on its highest cut to preserve the grass during summer months as it traps more moisture at soil level thus preventing it from going brown and dying and we only cut it when there is rain forcast. So the grass can grow to be several inches in height like a meadow, obviously more flowers/weeds pop up, but its easier pulling the weeds out and leaving the flowers that pop up for the insects.

So fast forward to this year, and besides seeing an increase in insects, butterflies, and a wider range of birds, year on year I saw 6 goldfinches descend on the bird bath yesterday, never seen that before, and we are also seeing loads and loads of grasshoppers.

Havent seen this many grasshoppers since the 70's and 80's which is nice to see. I could probably walk out and catch 5-10 from the lawn in 10minutes. I'd be lucky if I saw one grasshopper a day in previous years.

We have been trying to make the garden more insect friendly since Covid and I think its beginning to pay off.

Ozone mentioned in this study will always be found in built up areas, the human health impact is it blocks UVB to a degree which means humans get less UVB light and thus less vit D3. So even though circa 100% of the UVB will reflect off man made surfaces, the ozone stops alot of it from reaching the ground meaning you get less vit D3 in built up areas.

In the countryside the vegetation absorbs alot more UVB (circa 25%), so gardeners in the countryside have higher D3 levels simply from the absence of ozone.

And Bee's like other insects use UV light reflecting off flowers to choose the different flowers to bumble between in their search for pollen. Reduce the ozone to get more UV light to the ground and the bees can see the flowers better.

It would be interesting to see of more bees got to flowers where some UV lighting is placed over the flowers.

I'd imagine also a highway with traffic would act as sort of air barrier when there is traffic zooming thru it whole day making noise and wind, even if we ignore pollution.

They also act as a series of giant fast moving things that squish bugs.

The bees may still be headed to those flowers, they just may not make it...

There are also not much bees anymore. There are studies on this as well. Didn’t you notice you no longer need to clean your front glass of your car as much as you used to?

Global flying insect population by biomass remains stable while bees decrease and flies/mosquitos increase rapidly.

If you’re talking about honeybees, they are livestock. And they travel something like 2 or 3 miles from their homes, not more. if i decided to move next year, everyone in my neighborhood would see and alarming 75% drop in bee visits. And im just a hobbyist, keeping about 3 colonies.

But what is the actual difference in air pollution at your house compared to last year?

Are you worried about your own health from living so close to 2 major freeways?

Could also be noise pollution.

What I'm most fascinated by is the experiments scientists come up with to learn about bees. A prime example is all the hoops Tom Seeley jumped through to learn how swarming bees pick a new home. He found that they measure the volume of the cavity they move in, they consider how high up the place is, how big the entrance is, and whether bees have lived there before - just to mention a few. He performed his experiments on a "bee-deserted island" (with no honeybee colonies). The icing on the cake is that bees hold a democratic debate & voting as they make a life/death decision. He shared it all in his easy-to-read illustrated book: Honeybee Democracy, highly recommended.

Entomology is fascinating in terms of complex/distributed systems lessons it can reveal. I remember in college I read this book about a group conducting research on ants in New Mexico I think. That and the Maxis Ant Simulator are still very present in my mind when I reason about systems design and behavior.

There were more flowers on my property this year than last year, but I felt like the number of bumblebees I spotted were considerably less. I figured it was the unusually dry weather, but maybe the weeks of smoky days from the Canadian wildfires blowing across the Midwest was a big factor too.

I don't have much of a reference since I just moved here last September, and the lawn was already mowed at that point, but I've seen a really good number of bumblebees and honeybees this year (endangered Monarch butterflies too) leaving most of my lawn unmowed besides the small range I walk on. The native flowers and wildlife are really thriving on my property now. No particular problem with pests as a result either. I recommend anyone to do this if it's practical (no overbearing HOA etc)

We easily saw way more bees this year.. I have a massive flower garden right behind house. Bumblebees, honeybees, and even the little black bees have been around in numbers I haven't seen since living here. We also have an abundance of yellow jackets, crickets, dragonflies, and aphids. I did notice the frog population is down this year, less of the tadpoles hatched and made it out of the pond of all species.

Off-topic, but for anyone curious on the intelligence of bees, do watch the episode 7 of Cosmos: Possible Worlds by DeGrasse Tyson, this blew my mind on how certain animals and insects perceive geometry and how it is really not an acquired knowledge but an instinct to them:

https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/564291/s03-e07-the-search-for-in...

That's probably the least of their worries. Bees need flowers to exist to find flowers, and their native resources have dwindled. Bees can also not travel that far without refueling, so they need distributed flowers to be successful.

Another anecdote: Here in Maryland, I have these flowers in the back yard that usually are in bloom by September (i.e., now). They normally attract a ton of bumblebees, but this year, I've only noticed a few... There are a lot more butterflies than bees this time. I've got wasps nesting in a hard to reach hole in the ground. I've seen some dead so-called "asian" hornets in my neighbor's yard. There's a huge basketball sized nest of something in my other neighbor's tree. Very few bumblebees, unfortunately...

There are various flowers people recommend because bees like them and I have tried to have a guarden design to feed the bees based on this. What I have found is those that smell more due to either their quantity or are stronger scented seem to attract more bees and be more popular. Two big lavender bushes for example seem to be very well visited and I can smell them from a greater distance than anything else.

So I suspect this likely is part of the problem, it impacts our smell capacity too as pollution quickly overrides the ability to smell the flowers.

Are the plants native to your area? It's important to use native olants, otherwise the non-native plants can attract non-native bees.

Has anyone noticed an increase in bees especially over the last few years in late august in the northeast? I think I’ve always been stung 10x and don’t remember bees ever being this much of an issue in the past, to the point where my family cannot even go to the park or beach without being swarmed with bees.

I have no idea why you're being downvoted, but yes, I've noticed the same. I commented this exact same thing to my girlfriend about a week ago. Everywhere we go, there seems to be at least a couple of bees nearby, and it some places they are very dense.

Why are you being stung so much? I have quite a bit of native plants that I walk by all the time, and the bees, wasps, etc. never even seem to notice me much less atrack me. I even get quite close sometimes to film them with my phone.

I think I had a typo there, oops. I meant to say my kids have been stung 10x. Why? I don’t know! In fact this weekend I took them to a local fair and my 2 year old was stung twice by the same bee… he was doing nothing, just sitting on the ride and it stung him.

Air pollution has been solved. It's just a matter of time until the solution can be implemented.

Malcolm Bendall is an inventor that has created a novel catalytic converter that turns ALL EXHAUST fumes from any engine into clean air with about 20% oxygen. It requires no extra energy to use. It's just a simple retrofit of pipes and other components you need to add to the engine.

Search the latest videos on YouTube for Malcolm Bendall. He just presented and had his device verified by multiple experts at Tesla Tech last month.

He has been working with Mazda, General Motors, Tokyo Power, the Indian Government and more to create implementations of this technology which is based on plasmoids.

It's been solved, but not in that way... There is no simple retrofit for ICE engines to be clean. Electric motors are non emissive, and that is the proper solution.

Will they get better at it, because of evolutionary pressure?

That process take places over long Period of time … or you are joking?

There are some examples of evolution happening much faster than you'd think. The traditional view was that it took tens of thousands of years for a species to change, but there have been some with notable changes in only a few generations.

All that needs to happen is 1) there exists some (breeding) individual who contains the mutations, and 2) the selection pressure is strong enough.

I would think at least a hundred generation ? Maybe 50? How many generation those Russian foxes started to have floppy ears?

It’s not a genetically homogeneous population, so maybe there are some already much better at finding flowers in pollution, and those ones will be more likely to survive and pass on that trait?

I’m being quite serious (though not that knowledgeable on evolution science). It’s not like they have to develop gills. Perhaps a minor change is sufficient?

I don't know if I see MORE wasps than before, or if I just notice them more because I see less bees.

I wouldn't mind getting rid of some of the wasps. They're nasty.

I'm seeing an extra amount of wasps this year, must be a good season for them.

I've killed about 10 nests so far this year. The newest batch of them spread out on the back patio window. They're building a nest, but most of them chill on the window and wall very distributed like.

I've nearly given up and just walk past them now, never gotten stung, they just move out of the way.

Funny enough, yellow jackets like the front of the house, red wasps like the back. Yellow jackets are much meaner in my experience. Lots more of them per nest too.

In Boulder, I’ve noticed the opposite. Way more bees and bumblebees this year, way fewer wasps. I suspect it is highly cyclical even excluding external stimuli.

Doesn't seem too surprising considering beekeepers use smoke to calm honey bees...

Smoke blocks the ability to chemically communicate. When an alert signal is heard, it is rapidly repeated causing a swarm. The smoke prevents it from being heard in the first place.

Not at all surprising by this point

They will find them.

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