
Bees Are Bouncing Back from Colony Collapse Disorder - kevitivity
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-01/good-news-for-bees-as-numbers-recover-while-mystery-malady-wanes
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Noumenon72
Bees have somebody watching out for them. The insects that have gone missing
from our insect traps and windshields are still gone.

[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-
insect...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone)

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chaoticmass
Drive thru Oklahoma at night and you'll have a lot of bugs on your car.

Though as I say that, I think about last time I went thru that state I didn't
have as many bugs as I remember in the past....

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LostWanderer
Have the street cars and lamp-posts changed their lighting to LED?

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Shivetya
anecdotal, having both LED and halogen exterior lights on the home I haven't
seen any real difference in bug attraction. I did post a while back about how
the recent change over of street lamps to LED in my neighborhood messed up the
birds for awhile.

I have a standard "orange" streetlamp between my lot and the next house and
two LED on opposite sides of the street in both directions about three hundred
feet down from the house. It is now like having a full moon all the time.
Apparently when mounting LED replacements they get no hoods or other
mechanisms to limit light spread

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mbgerring
All of these articles only ever focus on commercial bee populations. I'm a lot
more interested in what's happening to wild bees.

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jansho
Nobody mentions this reason to love bees: they make excellent inspiration. I
have a big deadline coming up and just moved my desk to face the garden.
Watching the bumble bees nosing around the lavender patch is keeping me more
industrious than the carrot/stick!

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lostlogin
Try putting a bit of honey out and watch how many come. They can smell out
honey to rob from a long way off.

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jansho
Im not sure if this is tongue-in-cheek (I was serious in my earlier post) but
why not. For science!

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lostlogin
It wasn't. I was extracting honey from comb one weekend. Shut the place up and
left it on kitchen bench draining into a bowl. Came back to half a dozen in
the honey, a couple on the bench and others randomly smashing into windows
looking for gaps. Even once covered and sealed I could hear them at night
getting inside. It was like a version of Hitchcock's Birds, but non
terrifying.

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pmurT
Mites have been the largest issue and will likely take decades for the
genetics to select out for an uneasy balance. In the mean time, the commercial
guys can't keep doing business as usual and have to cleanup their act - they
had a nice free ride for a while

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bluejekyll
The article makes it sound like it's not clear that is the issue. By the end
it makes it sound like they really want to say it's pesticides, but the
farming industry relies on that so much for "good looking" food that perhaps
beekeepers are worried that if they point at that, farmers will be angry with
them.

EDIT: to be clear, I'm talking about what was written in this article. I know
nothing about the past mite issues in feral bee populations. Not debating
that.

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erdle
Mites are not 100% the culprit - but a lot of groups including the US Gov't
are still looking into all causes.

My father has been briefed by the USDA more than once on the issue, it's
complicated and nation states haven't been ruled out according to the last
update he had.

Most likely it's a number of causes.

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bluejekyll
Nation states? Seriously? Did they say how they thought a nation state could
do that on such a wide scale?

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ethbro
Offensive genetic engineering and release of modified organisms is sure to
happen once the techniques become available.

It's untraceable, gradual, and the investment required to do it will be well
within the reach of major nations.

And what better weapon than one which, once released, requires no upkeep or
maintainence and slowly cripples key biological supports of your rival's
economy?

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Dowwie
One source claims that bee populations are bouncing back. I think I'd like to
see more scientific sources assert this before I believe the good news

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kneath
> "…the overall increase is largely the result of constant replenishment of
> losses, the study showed."

Very misleading headline. The bees are not bouncing back, humans are splitting
up stronger hives into weaker hives. Kinda like saying humankind is beating
cancer by having more babies in third-world countries.

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radiorental
This is simply not true.

As other have noted, splitting is a natural process of beekeeping.

however, I've noticed a discernible change in the beekeeping profession in the
last 10 years.

To take a step back - there is a huge variation in bee characteristics from
hive to hive.

What I've noticed is that package and nuc suppliers (aka bee breeders) are far
less likely to treat hives. And it has become near impossible to buy
'traditional' chemical bee disease medications.

The prevailing modus operandi these days is to leverage natural evolutionary
processes. I.e. let weak hive fail and therefor let undesirable genes phase
out.

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roel_v
"As other have noted, splitting is a natural process of beekeeping."

Uh, splitting is very much _not_ natural (at least, I'm taking this to mean
artificial splits - if you're saying swarming is a form of splitting, which
isn't unreasonable even if it's not the wording I'd use, then disregards this
comment). It's part of 20th century beekeeping, yes, but _swarming_ is natural
bee behavior, and unnatural practices like splitting, queen clipping, brood
cutting, sugar feeding etc. are creating fragile colonies with weak resistance
that depend on human intervention (including chemical varroa treatment) to
survive.

And this is not just ideology, this is the trend in all apiculture/bee
entomology journals over the last say 5 years.

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radiorental
If you have a strong hive, do you let it swarm or do you intervene and split
it?

(for the uninitiated, good hives grow to the point that the queen and half the
hive leave to make a new colony, then you have a 50/50 chance the original
hive will raise a new queen, that the queen will mate and make it back to the
hive without been eaten)

Let me expand my original statement for clarification. splitting leverages the
natural process of swarming in the field of beekeeping.

As to some of the other 'interventions' you mention I politely disagree. It's
sort of like saying cows are weak in Canada because farmers don't let them
freeze to death in winter.

I recently had a hive attacked by ants. They lost a lot of food and brood. Do
I let them head into fall and winter with little to no chance of survival? The
fact the ants got into the colony was no fault of the bees, just bad luck.

There's survival of the fittest and there's animal husbandry. The two aren't
completely incompatible.

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Retric
They are largely incompatible. The ideal animal husbandry model is different
for populations that are going to be culled without breeding. Ex: Veal.

Useing similar methods on fast breeding species where you keep the offspring
is a very bad idea long term. The only way to keep things stable is to have
breeders who focus on culling the weak. But, you need a large breeding
population to maintain genetic diversity.

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cableshaft
Whatever decrease in losses they have from the disorder, my puppy is making up
for by eating them. Or at least it seems like it. I have to make sure he
doesn't get near any when I take him on walks and he still manages to get a
couple here and there usually. I can't believe he hasn't been stung enough to
stop going after them by now.

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DrScump
Has he considered authoring a paper on the subject? I mean, if a _cat_ can
publish one[0], it would be embarrassing to the canine race if dogs can't.

[0] [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/philosophy-journal-
cor...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/philosophy-journal-
corrects-35-year-old-article-written-cat)

~~~
mrfregg
Do not forget Dr.Olivia Doll: [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/how-one-
smart-doggo-g...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/how-one-smart-doggo-
got-editorial-boards-seven-medical-journals)

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macintux
Best headline I've seen all day, but the piece is much less cheery.

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honestoHeminway
If only we could breed mites that would die off like those genetically
modified mosquitos.

Or mites that only live from mites.

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digitalzombie
Reddit have a thread about this and apparently it's misleading and that the
Bees are still dying.

I can have a cancer survival rate of 15% and get a 2% bounce back with 17%
doesn't mean everything is swell.

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ohiovr
So all those scientists in Nature and the big science journals were just
chicken littles. To know the real story, get it from the pesticide makers!

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EGreg
What about the wild bees?

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lostlogin
Feral ones are basically all dead here in New Zealand. They don't survive long
in the wild. This may not be true where you are.

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EGreg
So basically this article is like an article that celebrates that tigers are
"BOUNCING BACK" even though all the tigers in the wild are dead in many
places, and only the ones in zoos live on?

WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO.

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donatj
I know it's completely circumstantial but I have noticed sooo many more bees
around my yard this year over the last several that it's given me hope!

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BucketSort
Good work bees! I was feeling guilty for wishing them all dead one birthday
wish after I got stung.

