
Two Different Approaches to Saving Bees - lettersdigits
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/27/530028003/two-scientists-two-different-approaches-to-saving-bees-from-poison-dust
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yawz
When we talk about "saving bees", most people think about honey bees. I'm a
hobbyist beekeeper, and honey bees have a good chance of surviving thanks to
people who care about them.

However, in most places, there are dozens or hundreds of other bee species. We
don't know or hear much about them. They are solitary bees, various types of
bumblebees, etc. They are the ones disappearing, and fast. Unfortunately, they
are the first victims of growing urban areas, mono-culturing and pesticides.

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soperj
I make mason bee houses(hotels, whatever) where ever I end up living (renting,
moved around a bit). They're pretty awesome, no stingers, pollinate
everything, and the houses are easy to build.

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garyrichardson
Does anyone have links to similar things for North American solitary bees?
These houses seem to be UK specific?

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yawz
I live in Colorado. We have mason bees around here. And you should be able to
find mason bee houses in certain big garden centers, big home improvement
shops and online:

[http://smile.amazon.com/s/?field-
keywords=mason+bee+house](http://smile.amazon.com/s/?field-
keywords=mason+bee+house)

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frankzander
Best approach: Use no poison. An alien may say: This humans seem to be bit
insane - they put a lot of poison on their fields where they grow their food
in order to protect their weak breeded plants against pets while they do
everything that this pests have a easy run. Maybe we should search for another
planet where the creatures seem to be more sane.

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j_m_b
> while they do everything that this pests have a easy run

Which is exactly why we can produce so much food / acre. Land use would need
to go up significantly, and thus the price of food, in order to be able to use
"natural" methods of pest control. This would affect developing countries the
most.

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tankenmate
The article addresses this issue, it says that for soya bean there is no
difference between treated seeds and non treated seeds. For corn there is a 2%
difference but this was within statistical error for this study. The biggest
way to boost crop yield is good quality fertiliser (organic or mineral).

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kavalg
Does that mean that neonicotinoids are now confirmed to be a major factor
contributing to the bee colony collapse?

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roel_v
'One of the factors', yes. There are three causes, which are separate but
related:

    
    
        - pesticide use (neonics, mostly)
        - 'varroa destructor' parasites
        - loss of bee habitat ('green deserts')
    

This triple-whammy is too much for bees, but that's not to say that solving
just one issue (or even two) would be 'enough' of a solution.

The first one will be solved (I think) by public awareness. There is a clear
direction in the public opinion against chemical pesticides (I know,
'everything is a chemical', I'm talking about public perception, for better or
for worse). It won't be long before (the most damaging) pesticides will be
squeezed out by on the one side regulation and on the other market pressures -
consumers asking for food with certain origin characteristics (like, no use of
certain pesticides, or none at all), thus farmers asking for treatment-free
seeds, thus the manufacturers providing it. They might be resisting it now,
but the invisible hand is hard to stop. It's just a matter of time - that's
not a call for complacency, obviously, the pressure needs to be kept on.

The second one is a bee husbandry problem. There too the tide is turning -
after 3 decades of researchers looking in the direction of chemical treatment,
the direction is shifting towards _less_ treatment, and moving towards
resistant bees through selective breeding, going back to stronger, locally
adapted breeds, 'Darwinian management' and less invasive apicultural
practices. How this will fit with intensive agriculture remains to be seen
(will such apiculture be compatible with moving 10's of thousands of hives
from orchard to orchard across great distances, following the blossom of
various plants across large areas?); but then again, there is already a small
move towards/experimentation with alternatives for bee pollination anyway
(like bumble bees). Maybe a combination of measures will yield a workable
solution at scale.

The last one is the most overlooked but (IMO) the real killer. The efficiency
of machines today (compared to even just 2 decades ago) makes agricultural
land so maximally occupied for growing food that there is no room for natural
habitats for any sort of animal - mammals, birds, and insects including bees.
Modern agricultural land might look 'natural' and 'green' when looked at from
aerial pictures, or even when driving by, but because every last square inch
is cultivated, no animals can live there (hence 'green desert'). Bees today do
better in urban and suburban settings than in rural areas, because of all the
plants in people's gardens providing forage all season long.

If we want results in the next few years, the only solution will be government
intervention - be it through subsidies for leaving land fallow, or by plain
requiring certain naturalzing management interventions (or rather, 'non-
interventions'. The public pressure that is shaping up around neonics just
doesn't exist (yet) when it comes to (ecologically) sustainable land use
management. It's also much harder to quantify - either a farmer uses neonics
or he doesn't; but what is 'sustainably managed land'? Everybody can define
that the way suits them best, hence a lemon market for consumers who wish to
influence producers.

(note on references to the above: this is roughly the state of the literature
in apiculture and agronomics, interspersed with some personal observations and
extrapolations; although there will be plenty of different opinions on
different aspects of it. In fact, I'm pretty sure that everybody in one of the
fields that are relevant will find something to take issue with. There is no
single one paper that says 'look everybody we conclusively proved that these
three issues account each for x% to the total problem'. On the other hand, I
don't think anyone who reads the major journals and follows the major
conferences (and who doesn't have an ulterior motive to push some fringe
agenda) will disagree that some combination of the above is what is causing
the difficulties that bees are facing the last decade, or two).

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wodenokoto
Thank you for the insights.

Are there any numbers comparing colony collapse between normal and organic
beehives?

I imagine that bees used for producing organic honey will have access to
greater variety of plants, since their immediate surroundings doesn't contain
pesticides, which obviously also lowers their exposure to pesticides.

I'm aware that bees used for organic honey travels outside their designated
organic habitat, but all things equal, they should be better of with regard to
the 1st and 3rd factor of colony collapse, than non-organic bees.

~~~
roel_v
Thing is, there is no such thing as _the_ colony collapse. Some colonies just
disappear (abscond) and we don't know why, others are weak and don't survive
winter, others are so heavily infested with varroa destructor that too many
bees get deformed wing virus and fizzles out, ... It's a combination of
things, which is what makes it so difficult to nail down. Furthermore, there
are many more factors that make it hard to compare apples to apples (how many
colonies in the area? How much forage? Weather? Disease vectors present?
Etc...)

There are some monitoted experiments (google 'bond experiment' for example)
but they cannot be used for 1:1 comparisons to say what is 'better'. Plus,
what is 'organic'? Technically (legally), it's following Demeter standards,
but who can fulfill those? Does that mean that all those others are 'non-
organic'? No, there's a very wide range left.

And even more... What are the goals of the beekeeper? No commercial apiary can
survive with 5 kg/year yield per hive. Should commercial honey production go
away? Leaving aside the animal welfare aspect, I think there's room for a
range of approaches, but it needs to be balanced. Of course, balanced by whom,
that's the question...

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amelius
Can't these seeds be treated with an additional protective coating that
dissolves after planting?

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libdong
It might be possible, but I'm guessing it's not trivial to make a hard coating
which also has the ability to dissolve arbitrarily.

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losteric
What about a hard coating that dissolves in the presence of water?

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autokad
I'm with the filtered approach. I dont really trust Krupe's work. yeah,
statistically significant on 12 fields .... 2% is right in the range of the
stated yield benefit, .5 - 5%, which farmers who actually do business seem to
think is economically beneficial.

"In another study, Krupke found that the seed treatments weren't of much
benefit to corn yields... the results from all the sites, the average yield
from the treated seed was about 2 percent higher, but Krupke says that
difference is not statistically or economically significant "

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exabrial
Is the spread of African (aka "killer bees") a possible reason why?

