25,000 Dead Bees Found In Car Park Amid Probe | Hacker News Reader

25,000 Dead Bees Found In Car Park Amid Probe

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72 pointswill_brown66 comments

Can anyone recommend a good source for background information about bees? 25,000 sounds like a huge number, but some quick googling (no idea how reliable the sources are) seems to indicate that's about the number of bees in a hive.

I'd like to have a better idea of whether this story is closer to, "Exterminators spray beehive, all the bees die" or "Colony collapse disorder threatens the existence of all life on earth"

Numbers of bees in a hive grows and shrinks depending on the season and climate. Typical numbers might be 15-20K bees in winter, 60-80K bees in summer.

Worker-Bee lifespan = ~2 months. All eggs laid by one queen!

Most of the bees were bumble bees (Bombus spp.), which have only hundreds of individuals in a hive. 25,000 honeybees could easily have been a single hive that died for any reason. 25,000 bumble bees is more alarming.

A least a starting point on Colony Collapse Disorder:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

A dead deer found on the side of the road in Pennsylvania has more biomass.

but not impact on future food supply.

Since they were most likely killed by a pesticide, it's not an epidemic, and the remaining bees can make more, just like the remaining deer can make more, and the remaining rabbits can always make more rabbits.

Deer don't pollinate flowers.

If a deer walked though a field it would stand to reason that it would encourage pollination.

Bees are some of the best pollinators, but they aren't exclusive in this regard.

Well, it's a good thing fruit grows at ground-level then, where deer can pollinate it.

Actually, most of the things that honey bees are critical in pollinating grow closer to the ground.

25000 bees are a minute fraction of the worldwide total. One deer is a minute fraction of the worldwide total, I'd assert their impact is on the same order of magnitude. Can we all stop examining local news and panicking globally?

If you started finding lots of deer dead in the woods, I might be concerned; on the side of the road, not so much.

If you started finding bees dead in their hive (which does happen, but not in this case), I might be concerned; finding them dead by bee toxic trees that have been recently sprayed with insecticide, not so much.

Can we all stop examining local news and panicking globally?

Am I coming across as panicky? I don't really see that... I'm just pointing out that deer don't have the same keystone role in large ecosystems as major pollinators.

My point has been and continues to be that the 25000 bees of the referenced story are not indicative of a major catastrophe, they are indicative of a local anomaly.

25,000 is a huge number because they were bumble bees, which exist in hives of hundreds of individuals (unlike honey bees, which can have tens of thousands).

The story in a sentence is "Exterminators drench tree in mixed insecticide, kill thousands of insects from the tree and surrounding area". It has little to do with colony collapse disorder.

So something like every single bee in a couple hundred colonies flew out to a single pair of trees to be poisoned? Isn't that fairly odd behavior in and of itself?

Wiki suggests bumble bees only range a few kilometers. Is it even normal to see that many colonies that close together?

I suspect the number is inflated - it's unlikely (but not impossible) that anyone counted all the bees. Estimating that number by eye could be off by an order of magnitude.

Probably the tree and surrounding vegetation were flowering abundantly, attracting many insects from the area. I would say thousands of insects on a large tree is not unfeasible at all, perhaps even tens of thousands. Whether they were all bees, and whether the bees were really all bumble bees, is not clear.

You're right that 25,000 bumble bees in one place does sound logistically difficult to arrange. We can back-of-the-envelope it...

(edit: increased foraging distance with data from reference, which slightly changes the conclusion)

It would be ~150 colonies within a several kilometer radius. If we assume mean foraging distance of 10km [1], thats (a rather beautiful) 314km^2 of source area. We should probably also assume that the vast majority of bees in the area are not visiting those two trees, as there are likely other good sources in the area too. If we assume 1-5% of the local bees might be visiting the trees, there would have to be a colony density of ~10-50 colonies per km^2. That is high, but not impossible. Previous measurements of bumble bee colony density have estimated in the region of 0.5 to 20 per km^2 [1].

So, one of the following is probable: the number of bumble bees is exaggerated in the story, or they weren't all bumble bees, or some of my estimates are wrong. I would arrogantly assert the first two are more likely :)

1. https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/handle/1957/35082

I know how ants stop going to a food source (e.g. the pheremone trail stops getting refreshed on the return trip) but how do bees stop? I know they transmit pathfinding information with dancing... do the bees just stop dancing on return or something?

The reason I ask is the 1-5% figure you mention. I assume bees must have some mechanism to prevent sending bees to fatal sites. For ants, no one comes back, so no one keeps going. Ant traps short-circuit this by providing food with a slow-acting poison - the ants make it back with "food," causing more ants to be sent, and soon a significant portion of the stockpile is poison, drastically reducing numbers in the colony. Could that have happened here? It sounds like that's probably not the case, given that the bees appear to have died practically on contact with the linden trees.

But I don't know how bee flow control works.

only a few kilometers? That's something like 67 thousand times the length of a honeybee, which would be equivalent to a human ranging around 133km for food/work every day. That's a hell of a commute, especially for a creature that has to violate physics to fly :)

> only a few kilometers? That's something like 67 thousand times the length of a honeybee

Which is what they do routinely. Bumblebees have been known to fly up to 8 miles (13 kilometers) from their nest. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Scientists-Map-the-Flight-of-...

> a creature that has to violate physics to fly

Nonsense. http://www.snopes.com/science/bumblebees.asp

He used a :) to indicate sarcasm. I'm sure he knows bees don't violate physics.

Usually, in this context, one uses a wink face to indicate sarcasm and a smiley face to indicate you find something amusing.

Also, I wasn't under the impression that he thought bumble-bees can’t fly, but that he is of the belief that at one point in time, scientists couldn't explain how it’s physically possible and that that is where this factoid came from.

> "only a few kilometers?"

At 30 - 50km/h? Yeah, "Only".

The hypothetical human in your example would have a car that traveled a couple thousand km/h. Given which, we'd be right to say "only" of his 133km commute as well.

2001: Planted Linden Trees. (hmmm. maybe toxic to bees)

2002: no dead bees.

2003: no dead bees.

...

2012: no dead bees.

2013:6/17 Sprayed Lindren trees with insecticides toxic to bees

2013:6/20 25,000 dead fucking bees

Conclusion: "It could be because Linden Trees are toxic to bees."

Where did you read that there were no dead bees in previous years?

The insecticide was Safari (Dinotefuran) which is toxic to bees, and it has been confirmed that it killed them.

http://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/state-confirms-pestici...

This was also concluded a few days ago: http://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/xerces-society-wilsonv...

2013:6/21 "It was because of the insecticide, we're still investigating whether the application was legal."

http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/Pages/news/130621bees.aspx

Insecticides might be killing insects? This must be studied for a few decades, we wouldn't want to jump to conclusions.

It should be no surprise that bees (as pollinators) and chemical companies are multimillion dollar/billion dollar industries within the larger agricultural industry.

It should also be no surprise the chemical companies are paying millions of dollars a year to special interest groups, lobbyists, PR, and "independent" research studies - all of which suggest Colony Collapse Disorder is not definitively linked with "insecticides", as you call them.

CCD is analogous to almost every other scientific theory that runs counter to powerful interests and money, backed by observation, research studies, empirical data, and plain common sense - think evolution or global warming - science and common sense goes out the window in favor of the status quo.

Yes, nobody talks about how the industrial beekeepers themselves are partly to blame by shipping their bees around the world and exposing them to new diseases. Gotta maximize short term profits, eh?

It's a real bummer. Most of the fertilizer/insecticide companies are focused on the corn and a few other cash crop or subsidized markets. The problem is that most of those crops self-pollinate or are pollinated by wind (like corn).

This leaves the industry at odds with the beekeeping industry which is absolutely necessary to keep pollinating quite a few of the other crops we actually want to EAT.

Insects are not all the same, some are hundreds of millions of years evolutionarily distant from one another. This leads to quite specialised biology in different insect groups, and many insecticides have highly specific action that targets only a subset of insect species by interfering with molecular pathways specific to them. So actually, we really don't want to jump to conclusions. Just because something is an insecticide, doesn't mean it kills or harms all insects.

A further relevant fact is that bee decline is related to many factors, possibly including pesticide use, but almost certainly including the modern practise of intensive bee farming and transport for pollination services, which leads to rapid spread of diseases.

Is there a movement in the US yet to ban neocotinoids? I would like to donate if so. I saw a few bees dying on the ground last year, but this year it seems much worse. I've probably seen five bees dying on the ground in the last week, and I don't even spend that much time outside! (This is in the East Bay near San Francisco by the way.)

"Workers plan to wrap bee-proof netting around the trees in an attempt to prevent the deaths of more bees."

Gee whiz, how about NOT SPRAYING POISON ON THE TREES in the first place?!

The netting is a stop-gap measure until the experts can definitively prove whether the insecticide sprayed on the trees kills insects.

Especially since the main reason for spraying are the aphids. Which they could keep low if there were more ladybirds. But alas! The ladybirds are being killed too.

Temporary ban on neocotinoids?

Please HN, let's be sensible about the bees. This is maybe the tenth story about bees I've seen hit the front page in the last couple of months. People seem to be absorbing the alarmist and unfounded opinion that we know what's causing CCD.

Truth is, we simply don't know what's causing it. There are many possibilities, and there are hundreds of research groups working on it. It has been shown that some pesticides do affect bees. But it has also been shown that various diseases as well as beekeeping practices have large effects.

CCD is complex, and a sky news story about a single incident of a bunch of bees dying is no reason to start jumping to conclusions. It's interesting, sure, but don't assume it tells us anything about CCD.

>It has been shown that some pesticides do affect bees. But it has also been shown that various diseases as well as beekeeping practices have large effects.

There is no direct link demonstrated between neonicotinoids and the honey bee syndrome known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). However, as the most likely candidate, that is why a story like this is important, because it is a case study likely to link the two. Is this story determinative? Absolutely not, otherwise that would be the headline, "Neonicotinoids Proved to be the Smoking Gun in CCD."

However, as to the diseases you refer to, recent research suggests that neonicotinoids may make honey bees more susceptible to parasites and pathogens, including the intestinal parasite Nosema, which has been implicated as one causative factor in CCD. (http://www.xerces.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Are-Neonico...)

As to the keepers theory, sure transport and handling may be blamed, but bee keepers have been around since at least the time of the building of the pyramids - in fact many tombs were uncovered with 2,000+ year old honey that was eaten by the discoverers (not a bad shelf life). Nevertheless, significantly well traveled bees tend to die at greater rates, of course this can not account for CCD in wild colonies.

I imagine neonicotinoids will prove to be the smoking gun, but more along the lines of nicotine and "third hand smoke" (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-hand_smoke). To complicate matters even further, the neonicotinoids are likely to not directly cause death, but to make bees more susceptible to diseases or parasites (as referenced in the study above), making the diseases and parasites more palatable candidates for the cause rather than an effect of the cause.

Without bees, humans wouldn't survive much more than 6 months on this planet.

That's really not true. Plenty of food self pollinates. However, I wouldn't really want to go on living without all the wonderful foods that bees provide us with. Think matrix-meals and you're feeling it.

We're already to the point where we can make food without bees. Corn is pollinated by the wind. With just corn, we can make anything else just by adding artificial flavors! I love Grapez with high fructose corn syrup, reconstituted corn meal, aspartame, Red No. 40, Blue No. 2, and artificial flavoring (manufactured in a facility that manufactures peanuts).

“The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees.”- UN report.

That is a fact, but it's misleading in this context. Most human staple foods are cereals (grass seeds), none of which are bee pollinated. If you took only the top 10 crop species which account for ~80% of human calorie provision, 0% are bee pollinated.

We could very easily survive without bees, but there would be a lot less fruit and many fewer wildflower species.

Definitely not true. We don't depend on bees for any staple food. Fruits are the primary crops that require bee pollination.

Also, almonds.

True (they are the seed of a fruit).

Just shocked they took the time to count all those dead bees.

You use counting scales.

Or just normal scales: count out 200 bees and weigh them collectively. Divide by 200 to get the average bee weight. Now weigh all the bees collected and divide by average bee weight to get estimated number.

Pesticides wipe out beehives all the time.

One of my hives was destroyed last year.

If you are in the business, perhaps you can provide some perspective on this. According to news reports for the last few months, there has been an epidemic of bees dying off. Can't recall for sure, but figures of 40%-75% loss have been floating around.

If true, this seems very significant. If we leave out the obvious emotional negatives, the economic fall out could be monstrous in the form of much higher prices and severe supply constraint on everything from fruit/pollinator-dependent food, to honey and products made from honey/beeswax. Not to mention farms going out of business due to poor harvest.

This has been going on for more than a few months -- at least since 2006. Some countries are starting to ban the insecticides suspected to be responsible.

More info: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

Fascinating... and I'm guessing there isn't any immediate action to limit the use of the suspected substance?

Well, like I said... there are some countries (EU) that are starting to regulate these pesticides, at least on a trial basis.

But over here in the US, not really. Partly this is because we've only relatively recently started to get good insight into the problem. And it's still controversial.

For a long time, we thought it might be caused by a disease or parasite; these are a big concern for beekeepers and an easy way to lose a hive under normal circumstances.

There's even some theories that claim it's caused by feeding the bees high-fructose corn syrup. This is a common practice to support hives during the winter, to make up for the honey reserves removed during the summer.

These pesticides are strongly suspected to interfere with bees, but we're still not sure they're the cause of CCD. It will be worth watching what happens in the EU.

I'm not 'in the business' - just have a couple hives in my yard.

The epidemic, sometimes called 'Colony Collapse Disorder', has been in the news for years. IMHO this seems especially to have hit commercial operators, who truck their bees all over the country. I blame it on the pesticides and the trucking.

The pesticides are nasty for sure. Its horrible to see an entire hive die off.

Thanks for clarifying and sorry about the hive.

I founded a vampire themed energy drink, which used honey as its main ingredient. To fill orders I contracted a local honey bottler in Homestead, FL (Bee Natural Honey). For what its worth I talked to the bottlers about the health of bees, and they felt Dade-County was a great place to study this because after the "real estate bubble", Dade-County cut funding for Summer time spraying of mosquitoes - in the opinion of my private honey bottlers during this period bees were healthier, and they had the benefit of experiencing Dade-County reallocating a mosquito spraying budget to experience the reintroduction of the same variable.

Clearly this is second hand info and not backed by any data I have seen, so it should be taken with a grain of salt, and I do not even know if what Dade-County uses to spray for mosquitoes is related to neonicotinoids, but I thought you may find their take interesting.

Sadly, I'm sure there have been a number of similar experiences and controlled experiments conducted, but when it comes to $$$ common sense is rarely that common.

Why is this on the front page?

Because for some pathetic reason, we're apparently still on the cusp of accepting that we are probably almost sure why the bees are dying, but a huge swath of us are turning a blind eye out of scientific ignorance or out of bribery. And our job as literate, scientific folk is to get outraged about this and use our cute metaphorical clout to make these other people, the majority, understand that the world is GOING TO SUCK someday if we kill the bees off enough to stop pollinating all the crazy delicious things we like to eat. Even if we have our heads up our asses over the supposed cause of this, we as an entire planet should still be completely paying attention, livid, and figuring out what the actual cause is. Because odds are good it's something humans did. If you're not upset about the bees dying, you are not thinking it through enough.

Well said!

This is mostly hyperbolic and wrong. You're right that bees are great, we should all care, and it would suck if they all died. You are wrong that we know what's causing it or that it's some nefarious scheme.

Firstly, nobody is turning a blind eye out of scientific ignorance, and to suggest bribery is involved is just ridiculous. Every time an industry has a problem that's being investigated by scientists, people start making bribery claims. It's absolute nonsense, especially in this case where there is a very active debate in the literature and many hundreds of labs working independently. Newsflash: agricultural corporations have almost no impact on research outputs. They fund a small amount of research, and often the results that get published are not what they wanted. They have no say on what gets published, except in perhaps a handful of cases where they illegally exert pressure, but I've never seen such a case. As a plant scientist, I find the idea of any company using money to influence the results of academic research completely laughable. They might use money to influence the research question, but not the answer.

Secondly, we really are not almost sure why the bees are dying. The evidence is very strong that there are many causes contributing to CCD, and it keeps getting more complex with time. What's clear is that it's not a single cause, and will not be simple to fix, and is not just about the insecticides.

I don't think the issue is that scientists are being lobbied or directly influenced by the chemical or agricultural industries. They don't need to do that since politicians (and farmers and the public) are quite happy to ignore published science.

>nobody is turning a blind eye out of scientific ignorance

Well the UK government demonstrated scientific incompetence, if I'm begin charitable[1]. I find it hard to believe that the highly experienced senior government scientists involved in promoting this study didn't recognise how flawed it was. Of course we have an Environment minister who denies climate change so it's hard to say what his crazy motivations are on this issue; it may just be personal bias due to his background as an extremely wealthy land owner and farmer.

>Secondly, we really are not almost sure why the bees are dying. The evidence is very strong that there are many causes contributing to CCD, and it keeps getting more complex with time. What's clear is that it's not a single cause, and will not be simple to fix, and is not just about the insecticides.

This is all true, but it's not a reason to ignore the effects of pesticides that have been measured. It also needs to be remembered that this isn't just about honey bees and CCD or even just bees. Pollinators of all types are in huge decline. The media and campaigners seem to concentrate on bees a lot because they have a group of humans (bee keepers) that will lobby for them.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog...

> it's not a single cause, and will not be simple to fix, and is not just about the insecticides.

Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence indicating the insecticides as a substantial contributing factor that banning them seems a reasonable precaution. Once we do that, we can see how well the bees recover. It's certainly possible that banning neonicotinoids will not be sufficient, but the odds seem pretty good that it will be necessary -- perhaps one step of several.

In short: don't confuse a scientific question with a public policy question. Sometimes the risk of not taking action outweighs the risk of acting on incomplete science.

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