Honey bees at risk for colony collapse from longer, warmer fall seasons | Hacker News Reader

Honey bees at risk for colony collapse from longer, warmer fall seasons

news.wsu.edu

54 pointsgmays76 comments

Honey bees in America are livestock, and these are animal husbandry concerns, not ecological ones. Honey bees are invasive (in fact, they outcompete native pollinators and are ecologically problematic). The Varroa Destructor mite killed every feral honey bee off in the 1990s, and while the situation may have changed in recent years, it was the case not long ago that every true honey bee you saw in the US belonged in some sense to a human owner.

And if the modern husbandry practice says bees don't thrive below the great lakes region, then what?

No more sourwood honey :(

Also far less fertilized plants, and therefore far fewer seeds. Hilariously, this is addressed in Bee Movie, which I can't recommend enough if you want to watch something that defies explanation of its existence, with every aspect of itself.

Someone will find an alternative, market the shit out of it and it will become the dominant variety in 20 years once bees die out in France.

I don't understand the question. Isn't this like asking what happens if pigs don't thrive below the Great Lakes region? If battery farm collapse disorder was a thing, nobody would be freaking out. Native plants do not in fact depend on honey bees for pollination.

Stories will run about native pollinators being threatened by ecological and environmental catastrophes, and we should take those seriously. But from what I understand, honey bees are one of those catastrophes.

Pet peeve triggered.

This is little to do with the honey bee "collapse", and the linking to warmer fall seasons is not the right causation in my opinion.

A not-so-secret secret for beekeepers is to get your queens locally. Why? Because your queens adjust and even genetically select to the local weather and environment over generations. It is much better to capture a swarm locally than to buy a queen from some fancy dealer several states over.

There are very happy queens on the equator, going around 12 months without "winter clustering". If you take a queen from Nebraska, ship it to the Pacific Northwest, what do you think the queen will do? "Collapse".

Take a Florida "native" queen and take it to Nebraska, her entire colony will "collapse" because the girls have no idea how to survive in Nebraska winter.

What is this "shipping" about you ask? I would be remiss if I did not mention big agg [0]. that fine almonds, grapes, and avocados. the Pacific northwest hives do not pollinate all those plants. Transplanted colonies in thousands from all over the US are pollinating so you get your almond milk. A lot of those colonies cannot survive the weather change. They pollinate then die. Many unscrupulous beekeepers will just destroy all their colonies. There is no financial incentive to ship them back and forth. they can start a new colony for way less.

[0]: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/37059/49131_specia...

Old article but should give a bit more weight to grasping the commercial bee business.

(Yes, I have hives in a subtropical region.)

Farming Practices just need to get better and smarter. Some of the big successful operations simply compensate by keeping bees in a climate controlled warehouse at 40 degrees or so. That allows them to have really good control of bee behavior.

Got any links?

I assume one'd need a lot of bees in that warehouse to make it economically feasible, hence lots of openings for them, and at that point can you do efficient climate control?

It’s one of the nations largest operations they got stuff figured out. There was an article about them how they are keeping losses super low like 5-8% using that method but I don’t have the link unfortunately. Industrial farming meets Industrial beekeeping.

The natural world constantly has disasters and has had disasters for 4.5 billion years. It's only in the last five years that dying newspapers realized they could get clicks by breathlessly reporting on them.

Isn’t this exactly the sort of thing newspapers should be reporting on? The fact that there have been disasters in the past is a bizarre reason to stop reporting on disasters now.

"The natural world constantly has disasters and has had disasters for 4.5 billion years."

So the answer is:

"Oh well, disasters happen, guess I'll just go die".

Driving a Car:

"Watch Out, you're going to hit that wall".

"Oh well, people get in accidents all the time, nothing I can do, no point in turning the wheel".

I'm glad I'm older and feel deeply sorry for the generations to come.

I feel deeply sorry for all the creatures and plants and ecosystems we are in the process of destroying.

I've come to believe the world would be a better place without any people at all. We are headed towards and earth in which there's few other large animals except us and the animals we farm.

Earth might possibly have been the most precious jewel in the entire universe and we've trashed it.

You listen to too much doom and gloom propaganda if you believe this.

I live in South Texas and the last summer was the most brutal one I have ever experienced. I've never seen so many trees die and it was indeed quite depressing. I keep bees and worried about them as well, but do supply them with water and that seemed to get them through. I didn't need to listen any propaganda, I simply had to go outside and feel how hot it was or see all the death that drought brought.

And this winter was one of the coldest in memory. Maybe the earth is starting to cool? I mean I walked outside

https://www.noaa.gov/news/us-had-its-warmest-winter-on-recor...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/us/winter-weather-cold-sn...

I'm pretty sure the refusal to acknowledge reality is causing more nihilism at this point than the truth ever could.

I don’t think the ground ever even froze this winter.. not sure where you hail from, but sounds like in a cave.

Where the Hot is, and the Cold is, is shifting.

US Midwest is being hit by a 'weaker' Jetstream, that allows more cold arctic air in the winters. So winters are getting colder even while the summer is hotter.

It is called Climate "Change". It is a giant complex system, the effects are dynamic and to the random person walking outside can appear random, floods in the desert, moisture in different areas. Some areas getting dry, some wet, some hotter, some colder.

That’s a far cry from “there won’t be much left other than us and our farm animals.”

Or the belief that the earth is better off without us. I’d argue intelligent life is worth it if the cost is having no more polar bears. (Obv it’s better to have both and they’re not mutually exclusive, just making the point.)

Earth is just a big rock floating in space and full of bugs without us.

Anecdotes aren't data, and one summer isn't climate. The climate warriors absolutely pounded that into my head for decades, but you experience a drought and the world is literally ending? C'mon

Maybe the world IS ending, but anecdotes and single summers are not valid talking points

That’s true but to be sure, data is on the same page. I was not denying climate change.

I did not say the world is literally ending, I said that it is depressing to watch so much death. How much death do I need to see before it goes from anecdote to data? Does it matter that it was also, by a significant margin and unexpectedly, the hottest year on record for the entire world?[0]

[0]https://www.noaa.gov/news/2023-was-worlds-warmest-year-on-re...

If most people hold these nihilistic/defeatist sentiments, then yes, we really are doomed. Thankfully, I don't think that's the case.

Then you aren’t paying close enough attention to the metrics. We’ve blown past the target of 2 degrees, in fact today it was 1.57 degrees. We’re rapidly approaching several tipping points after which parts of the biosphere simply won’t recover.

See:

https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2024-world-experien...

https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Space_f...

And the trajectory for emissions is still only going up and not expected to change until 2040 at the earliest. We’re royally screwed.

Those metrics don’t mean anything because climate models are no more scientific than a monkey with a dart board. That’s exactly the propaganda I mean.

It’s like we only have people who either deny climate change is happening at all, or swallow this bullshit wholesale, and nothing in between.

We have the technology to generate all of the energy we need from renewables. We have electric cars. We can use as much energy as we want and still get back to 1800s level carbon emissions if we just decide it’s worth paying for, and the worse things get, the more we’ll think that. We’re not going to wait until New York is under water.

It’s now even getting to where we are doing so just because it is cheaper. In 2040 nobody will be building a fossil fuel plant. Barely anyone is now. Over 80% of new power generation is renewable globally, a number that will only increase.

It’ll be fine.

I feel like you’re missing the point? Once the temperature has risen it’ll already be too late, it doesn’t really matter if you then reduce carbon emissions after that point because all kinds of drastic non-reversible effects will have taken place.

"no more scientific than a monkey with a dart board"

That is really un-fair to the people building super computers to calculate trillions of volumetric elements with hundreds of variables.

The general math has been known since 1896. And even those original gross calculations have turned out to be surprising close.

Current models are just continuing to dial in, refine. Where are these giant errors you speak off?

"In 1896 Svante Arrhenius calculated the effect of a doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide to be an increase in surface temperatures of 5–6 degrees Celsius. This 1902 article attributes to Svante Arrhenius a theory that coal combustion could eventually lead to human extinction."

Even oil company models from the 1970-80's (before they were denying it), have turned out to be correct.

We've known the science for these calculations for over a 100 years.

But yeah, I guess I'm being pulled into responding to an anti-science bot again.

Climate depression is understandable and I'm not sure what's going on with the replies - is HN a hub for climate change denialism now?

Human-caused climate change is as much an established fact as is possible in this field. Alternative "theories" are as much as an established non-fact as is possible in this field. Here are 428 references on the subject which will need to be disputed in order to change that fact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#References (not actually 428 because there's multiple references to the same paper but in different locations, etc. You get my point.)

Despite actions like UK declaring a climate emergency, the Paris Agreement, etc, it's not clear to me that the world is going to take the actions necessary to prevent massive climate-change related disasters. When those disasters take root and trigger refugee crises the likes of which human society has never encountered, any green-energy and green-material initiatives are probably out the door as nations turn to the cheapest, fastest, shortest-term energy and materials solutions possible to either handle the influx of refugees or the war materials needed to turn them away.

What are you seeing that makes you think this won't be the case? Are you seeing improvements in green technology and believe those will be deployed quickly enough to curtail climate change? I'm skeptical: we had a huge reduction in emissions lain at our doorstep by COVID and for many industries work continued unabated as we did our jobs from home, but irrational established mentalities are forcing emissions back up by making people come into the office at threat of firing. If green energy, green materials, or sustainable practices offend established sensibilities in the same way, why would they take root?

You linked a wikipedia reference section about climate change, suggesting people need to argue those points, and then immediately devolved into doomsaying with a theoretical war with refugees after theoretical "massive" climate-change-caused disasters.

I demonstrated that in order to dispute human-caused climate change, someone certainly has their homework set out for them! :)

Then I shared why many of my generation don't believe we can turn away from this, not because of our technology, but because of our sociology, our politics. Similar to how people believe AI will "free people from labor" despite improvements in technology almost never reducing labor loads but instead just getting people fired.

Remember when the ozone layer was what everyone was freaking out about? How'd that whole thing go?

A significant portion of the world took the threat seriously. Coordinated action was taken. The risk still persists.

* A significant reduction in the consumption of ozone-depleting substances (ODS) has been achieved globally since 1986. This reduction has largely been driven by the 1987 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Montreal Protocol.

* The largest historical extent of the ozone hole — 28.4 million square kilometres — occurred in September 2000. This area is equivalent to almost seven times the territory of the EU.

* The 2023 ozone hole has been larger compared to 2022.

https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/topics/in-depth/climate-change-...

You can answer your own rhetoricals you know.

I'm just helping you to realize these problems are in fact solvable and the wild disaster predictions aren't exactly productive.

That is a fine line to walk.

Since a lot of people that say it is 'solvable', and we'll 'adapt', seem to also be the same people saying we don't need to do anything, or argue against 'solving' the problem. Actually trying to block solutions.

It goes like this, 'the problem is solvable', 'so we don't need to try and solve it'.

Basically arguing for kicking the can down the road.

'Surely someone will solve this, so I don't have to, and furthermore, I'd really appreciate not being bothered with this anymore.'

"Ozone" layer was a win.

We found a problem, reported it, people believed the scientist, and we identified and adapted to solve the problem. We fixed it.

Same with 'Acid Rain'.

We don't hear about it. Because we identified a problem, believed the science, and fixed it.

I'm continually dumfounded that we used to be able to adapt and fix things, but suddenly with "CO2", this one molecule that we've know was a green house gas for a 100 years now. Suddenly this is the thing people don't want to believe.

Now? Read any comment section about climate change here, and a solid portion are just covert denial or people looking down on science and scientists. Some of it is people thinking they're smarter than they are, some of it is cognitive dissonance, and some of it is selfishness, because tackling climate change probably involves limiting some of the wanton excess that the capital class (or aspiring capital class) desperately craves.

> we had a huge reduction in emissions lain at our doorstep by COVID

Before covid I lived in a city and took public transportation every day. Now that I work from home I live in the suburbs and I drive every day. Projecting WFH as the solution for every problem is silly.

Humans lived in a symbiotic relationship with the ecosystems we were in for thousands of years, even after developing agriculture. Humanity is not the source of the problem.

It only became a systemic issue after we developed industrial farming practices without regard for the delicate balances we relied on, by way of extracting the nutrients in the soil to sell on the market in some way or another. This isn't to say we need to dismantle industrial farming, but we should alter the ways we do agriculture to be more conscientious of the natural environment and promote sustainable agriculture. But this may be impossible without some serious crisis in the short/medium term.

We developed these practices to prevent starvation. Unless we have industrialized fungi production for protein replacement, industrial farming is here for awhile longer.

> industrialized fungi production for protein replacement, industrial farming is here for awhile longer.

What do you mean? This sounds like industrial farming.

To feed 8 Billion, we will need 'industry'.

But we can make it more friendly. Technology has advanced, it can be the problem and the solution also.

Like vertical farming without soil.

Or some fungi or insect protein factories, that are powered by solar.

And done well, it need not be land bound or even earth bound.

Humans living with nature for 1000s of years is a bullshit comparison. Human population was less than 1-200 million for those thousands of years. Now it is 8+ billion. The largest cause is the Worlds economic system where we need population to keep growing so that demand keeps growing which results in supply growth and the cycle keeps going on getting bigger. I feel AI powered with cheap renewables like solar and wind is going to end this cycle the result could be non violent population decrease over time but because of how rapid the change will be and how fast it will take economic opportunity out of lot of people hands I think a huge war is more likely.

The climate has been changing forever. Mesopotamia was once fertile and tropical, now it's Iraq. Humans survived the ice age. There is no such thing as a constant environment.

Are humans causing climate change? Absolutely. Is the world going to become uninhabitable? No. We adapt, we use technology. Don't depress yourself into nihilism. Apocalyptic thinking has a rich history, you are becoming a member of yet another fad.

Yes, and when the climate changes too much, everything dies. I mean, I don't see too many dinosaurs left. The sheer hubris to think that it can't happen again...

Yes the climate changes quite rapidly when an massive asteroid strikes the planet

Some would wish to end the human race, suicide, stop reproducing. My solution is to just adapt, create new technology, get air conditioners. I'm old enough to remember the UN telling us we would all be dead from climate change by the year 2000:

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

This is pure hubris. It is absurd to say “don’t worry, we’ll adapt” while also telling the people who care about climate change that they’re taking this too seriously.

I'm not saying "don't care", but to literally think the human race is going to go extinct, and to stop reproducing or wish people would stop, and to live in general anxiety and fear, is absurdly ridiculous.

While I agree that climate change is an awful disaster, I think humans are way more valuable than you give us credit for. Can beauty exist without someone capable of experiencing it?

Many things that some humans subjectively describe as beautiful have existed without humans, many even predate the evolution of humans.

I didn’t say we create beauty, I said we experience it. What is the point of beauty if no intelligent creature is around to appreciate it?

\1 What we as humans experience is subjective to humans.

\2 Who's to say animals don't experience beauty, primates, dolphins, octopus, etc are all pretty high on the IQ scale and likely have EQ.

\3 Lastly, what makes human experience such an important factor for the environment in any case? Modern humans have been about at most 2 million years while life on earth has been about for magnitudes more time.

1. Our specific individual experiences are subjective, but the fact that we experience things is not.

2. It’s possible that some animals can experience some amounts of beauty, but certainly not on the level of humans. Also the lives of humans are rich and varied in ways that other animal lives just aren’t.

3. If you don’t see why preserving something as unique as humans is important… I don’t think you’re really considering how special we are.

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