
Rising CO2 Levels May Contribute to Die-Off of Bees - jdnier
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/bee_collapse_co2_climate_change_agriculture/2991/
======
bjelkeman-again
The most exposed bees are solitary bees and bumble bees, even though the
issues with honey bees seems to be written about more in the press.

It is relatively easy as an individual to give the bees a helping hand. One
can buy or build a so called bee hotel [1]. It helps the bees with nesting
site locations. When sited it requires essentially zero effort but supports
the bees and other insects.

One can also become a honey bee keeper, but it requires more effort. It is
quite fascinating though. You can read about our efforts. [2]

[1] [http://www.arkinspace.com/2012/06/welcome-to-bee-
hotel.html](http://www.arkinspace.com/2012/06/welcome-to-bee-hotel.html)

[2]
[https://beginnerbeekeepers.wordpress.com](https://beginnerbeekeepers.wordpress.com)

~~~
rihegher
I'm living in south west of France where there is more and more of these
insects hotels. Thing is, every time I pass by one of it I can't see any
insect at all. Maybe it's because the weather was still cold on those times.
Still every time I can't help wondering if it's really works as expected.

~~~
jdnier
Each bee species is different. Blue mason bees, for example, are only active
for 3-4 weeks when the first flowers appear, then they die. It's a pretty
incredible life cycle: 11 months developing from egg -> larva-> then spin
cocoon-> finally a few weeks to forage for pollen and lay their own eggs.
There are many species of native bee with short cycles like this. The native
bees you see in April will be different than the bees in June, different than
in August.

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tptacek
I ask/say this in every honey bee thread:

My understanding is that feral honey bees have been extinct in North America
for a long time (since the 1980s?), and that they're an introduced species.
The logic then goes: if you see a honey bee flying around outside, it at some
point belonged to a honey bee keeper.

I'm also of the impression that (a) the costs for pollination services haven't
shot up in conjunction with colony collapse disorder (CCD), and that CCD is
defined in terms of an increase in colonies that fail to overwinter. It's not,
the logic goes, as if all the honey bee colonies fail; they just seem to be
more fragile.

There's also a market for queens to start new colonies with, and my
understanding was that the market for these queens hasn't gotten crazy in
response to CCD.

I think I got a bunch of this stuff from EconTalk a few years ago, in an
interview with a "honey bee economist".

Are these assumptions still valid?

~~~
jly
>> My understanding is that feral honey bees have been extinct in North
America for a long time (since the 1980s?), and that they're an introduced
species. The logic then goes: if you see a honey bee flying around outside, it
at some point belonged to a honey bee keeper.

I don't believe this is the case, meaning not all feral bees are escaped
swarms, although many may be. See this for more (a lot more) information:
[http://scientificbeekeeping.com/whats-happening-to-the-
bees-...](http://scientificbeekeeping.com/whats-happening-to-the-bees-
part-5-is-there-a-difference-between-domesticated-and-feral-bees/)

>> I'm also of the impression that (a) the costs for pollination services
haven't shot up in conjunction with colony collapse disorder (CCD), and that
CCD is defined in terms of an increase in colonies that fail to overwinter.
It's not, the logic goes, as if all the honey bee colonies fail; they just
seem to be more fragile.

I can't comment on the price of pollination services, but I don't believe CCD
is defined solely as 'failing to overwinter', implying the bees starve or were
otherwise ill prepared during a period of dearth. CCD is typically defined as
a general failure of the hive in the presence of adequate environment, seen by
absconding or dying off. Honeybees have been so well studied over the last 10
years or so with the advent of CCD that the phenomenon is much better
understood. Many experts today believe it is caused by a combination of
continually more unnatural beekeeping practices, for example the continued
feeding of non-honey sugar sources, monoculture crops, chemicals used in
agriculture, forcing the bees to reuse comb indefinitely, etc.

>> There's also a market for queens to start new colonies with, and my
understanding was that the market for these queens hasn't gotten crazy in
response to CCD.

I buy queens for non-commercial beekeeping and I haven't seen any observable
difference in my area. They are not difficult to breed with adequate
resources.

~~~
Qworg
You are correct RE: CCD. It actually doesn't show up as "failure to
overwinter" ever.

~~~
tptacek
Interesting. Do colonies spontaneously collapse during the summer, or am I
just saying something close to correct using the wrong words?

I read your other comment about pollination fees, and went to look them up,
and found this in the 2012 USDA pollination fee report:

 _The cost of honey-bee almond pollination services is believed to have risen
in connection with increased costs of maintaining hives in the midst of an
industrywide overwintering loss epidemic which is attributable to, but not
limited to, colony collapse disorder_

~~~
beardicus
>> The cost of honey-bee almond pollination services is believed to have risen
in connection with increased costs of maintaining hives in the midst of an
industrywide overwintering loss epidemic which is attributable to, but not
limited to, colony collapse disorder

Note also that honey prices have gone up (almost doubled), as more of those
resources are shifted into "growing more bees" to replace heavy losses:
[http://www.honey.com/honey-industry/honey-industry-
statistic...](http://www.honey.com/honey-industry/honey-industry-
statistics/unit-honey-prices-by-month-retail/)

------
devy

       The study itself concluded that the decline 
       of plant proteins in the face of soaring carbon 
       dioxide concentrations provides an “urgent and 
       compelling case” for CO2 sensitivity in pollen 
       and other plant components.
    

I wonder if that pollen with significantly reduced protein would also affects
human allergy, as it's very common these days. (Not sure if were common a few
decades ago, but I am skeptical.)

Love to hear someone with expertise in this to chime in.

~~~
ageofwant
People have noted correlations between climate change and allergy increase:
[http://fightthecauseofallergy.org/page/climate-change-and-
al...](http://fightthecauseofallergy.org/page/climate-change-and-allergy)

~~~
ars
That would be backwards then. Less protein means less allergy not more.

Of course it's trendy to blame absolutely everything on climate change, even
contradictory things, so.........

~~~
nikdaheratik
It isn't contradictory if the warmer weather or reduced rainfall trigger more
high pollen days, it could be worse for allergy sufferers even if the pollen
released has less protein. We don't know for sure, but that's why we do
research.

------
jdnier
Increasing CO2 levels alter plant physiology and significantly reduce protein
in pollen. "...scientists testing the pollen content from goldenrod collected
between 1842 and 2014, when atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide rose
from about 280 parts per million to 398 ppm, found the most recent pollen
samples contained 30 percent less protein."

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brianlweiner
Does anyone know if it's possible that crops producing increased yields
correspondingly produce pollen with decreased protein?

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pbreit
I've been hearing that bees were dying off my entire 46 year life. Is there
ever anything to such reports?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Beekeepers will build new hives as the old ones die off. Yes its been going on
for decades. Its expensive in time and labor and reduces honey yield by a big
fraction.

A new queen can be created at will with the right technique, so little danger
of the bees disappearing forever. But imagine if you lost a third of your
fruit crop every year. You'd want to get to the bottom of it.

~~~
mkesper
The same is also not true for feral bees, they do the biggest part of the
pollination but do have no professional caretakers.

------
nkurz
An interesting study, and I find it surprising that goldenrod (a classic
"weed") would do worse under higher CO2 when most plants thrive. Generally,
low CO2 is worse for plant growth, and indoor gardeners sometimes
intentionally boost the CO2 level for higher yields.

The paper asserts that the protein content of goldenrod pollen goes down as
CO2 concentration rises. Since bees depend on goldenrod pollen for protein,
implication is that higher CO2 is bad for bees. As evidence, they point to
both pollen collected when CO2 levels were lower, as well as pollen collected
from plants grown under controlled CO2 conditions.

Maybe when exposed to high CO2, the goldenrod produces more pollen, but with a
lower protein percentage, similar to the way that water stress can result in
fruit with higher sugar concentrations? Plausible, but the paper seems to say
no: "S. canadensis biomass production was not correlated with Ca for either
year (p=0.26 and 0.87 in 2012 and 2014, respectively)." I'm assuming they are
giving the p-value for "is correlated" and using it's high value as evidence
of "not correlated", but I'm not sure because they don't give the actual data
or cite an outside source here.

So what's happening here? Why doesn't goldenrod thrive with increasing CO2?
Well, maybe the issue is that something else thrives better, and crowds out
the goldenrod? Mentioned in the paper is that the study site represents a
number of species representative of highgrass prairie. In two of the sites,
the goldenrod was outcompeted regardless of CO2, but in one of them (the high
clay "Austin" soil) both the goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) and indiangrass
(Sorghastrum nutans) were codominant.

That's about all the information given in this paper, but digging deeper into
earlier studies we find more relevant information. Earlier studies show that
in the presence of higher CO2, the total biomass on the Austin/clay soil
increases dramatically. Estimating from figure 3B here
([http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=14...](http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1430&context=usdaarsfacpub))
it looks like the biomass goes from about 200 g/m^2 to 300 g/m^2 as the CO2
goes from 300 ppm to 500 ppm.

More interestingly, in that earlier study it's noted that "The covariance
matrix of species biomass suggested there were negative associations among
several species. The strongest negative covariance was between S. nutans and
S. canadensis (Figure 4B), indicating that an increase in S. nutans was
strongly associated with a decrease in S. canadensis. This negative
association was apparent in the biomass values (Table 4)."

Assuming the new paper is correct that there is no correlation between CO2 and
goldenrod biomass, this makes it sound like the goldenrod is getting pushed
out by the indiangrass at higher levels of atmospheric CO2. Or more exactly,
indiangrass thrives and goldenrod is unchanged. Maybe, but I can't confirm
from the tables and figures. They don't seem to give a before and after CO2
treatment that is specific to both species and soil type.

One interesting point they do make is that "The strong negative covariances
among Bouteloua, Sorghastrum, Solidago, and Schizachyrium imply that CO2 and
soil effects on plant productivity and species composition will be mediated
primarily through interactions among these dominant species. We expect to see
different trajectories of community change among the soil types in response to
the CO2 gradient because of differential effects of CO2 on the water budgets
of these three soils. For example, we expect CO2 enrichment to favor the C3
component of the experimental communities, especially S. canadensis, more on
the sandy Bastrop soil than on the clay soils".

They also say "Total % N declined from 2002 to 2005 by about 10% below 10 cm
in Austin soils, but was unchanged in Bastrop and Houston profiles." Is it
coincidental that decreasing soil nitrogen would correspond to decreasing
nitrogen content in the pollen?

So what does it all mean? I think it means that increasing CO2 levels will
benefit some plants more than others, and which plants that get the most
benefit from increasing CO2 differ depending on the base environment. I
continue to be worried about the future of honeybees (we lost our backyard
hives over the winter), but I'm doubtful that increasing CO2 levels are among
the major risk factors.

I'm also bothered that the new paper doesn't seem to seem to discuss this, and
that it doesn't even mention the effect of the increased CO2 on the plants
competing for the shared resources. I'd guess that the headline of "Increasing
CO2 helps native prairie grass outcompete famous allergen" didn't have much
appeal. I'm friends with people who've done fieldwork for one of the authors,
and everything they say implies she's a good scientist, but this paper seems
more opportunistic than fundamental.

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zevkirsh
rising c02 may ( fill in the blank here)

there is epidemic of bad science resulting from overfunding for anything
related to c02 research.

it's nonsense. it's not 'wrong' because 'wrong' is falsifiable in one
direction or another it's BAD science because it is inconclusive wasted effort
with crap data and nothing verifiable.

fine, believe in the immanent global catastrophic VERSION of climate warming
caused and potentially preventable by mankind resulting from c02 emissions. GO
AHEAD AND PULL YOUR HAIR OUT. BUT CAN WE PLEASE STOP FUNDING CRAP ASS SCIENCE
RESEARCH THAT WAS NEVER INTENDED TO YIELD CONCLUSIVE FALSIFIABLE RESULTS OTHER
THAN X MAY CAUSE Y , OR IT MAY NOT.............

THE CULT OF BAD SCIENCE ..........AND
PSUEDOSCIENCE..........continues...........

~~~
abraae
I find climate change very depressing, though I'm a complete believer in it.
So I normally welcome any debunking of articles like this, since its good to
know things aren't as bad as they could be.

But your debunking is not useful. Capitals are unpleasant to read and imply
someone ranting/unhinged. You don't seem to actually address anything specific
in TFA. You allege there is an epidemic of bad science but provide no links or
backup to your claims.

~~~
vixen99
A complete believer? Welcome to the Church of CAGW! It has to be 'Catastrophic
Anthropogenic Global Warming' because no 'denialists' deny the fact that
carbon dioxide produced by humans helps the atmosphere retain more of the
sun's heat. That's not up for belief; it's a fact. The question is: to what
extent and what is the nature of the relationship? We do not yet know the
answer.

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phkahler
>> How Rising CO2 Levels May Contribute to Die-Off of Bees

And teen pregnancy. You know with all the warming they're more tempted to take
their clothes off.

It's interesting that TFA also points out that increased CO2 makes the starchy
parts of the plant grow faster, which is why the percentage of protein is
lower. CO2 - good for plants.

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codecamper
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's
horses and all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty together again.

