Summary
The U.S. beekeeping industry is experiencing unprecedented losses, with hundreds of millions of bees dying over the past eight months.
Blake Shook, a leading beekeeper, called it “the worst bee loss in recorded history.”
Researchers remain uncertain about the cause, pointing to potential factors like habitat changes and weather patterns.
Beekeeping operations are struggling to survive, raising concerns about food security and the sustainability of crop production.
Bee-keeping is about the most intensive form of agriculture that we humans have, with one species (and a couple of close relatives) providing pollination for just about every major insect-pollinated crop on the planet. It is particularly extreme in the US. We ship a large proportion of all the hives in the USA to California for the annual almond crop flowering. Then we ship them all back to where they came from. It is a perfect set up for spreading diseases and parasites. In the process of all this, we are depriving native pollinators of sustenance. So the one alternative source of pollination when the bees die has already been decimated every single year.
We are the extinction event
Had quite a few arguments with climate change trivialising friends/relatives. The classic “the climate is always changing” and “earth has been warmer”… The one point that seems to stop at least some in their tracks was this:
You know I studied geosciences? Do you know what we call the periods in earths history where climate was changing as fast as it currently does? We call them global catastrophes and extinction events!
I have come to the same conclusion. The realization comes with lots of fear and anxiety, but also a bit of peace. The earth has gone through many mass extinction events and recovered, so hopefully it will do the same after this. It is interesting that this extinction event is caused in part by a species living on it that can see what is going on, had opportunities to prevent/mitigate it, and chose not to.
Yup. The wealthy have us fighting culture wars while they strip the planet.
couldn’t be all the pesticide in over use?!
couldn’t be that these bee’s are invasive and not native to the land…
couldn’t be that diversity is actually fucking essential?
Neonicotinoids also bioaccumulate and are responsible for declining numbers of insectivore birds. This results in a viscous circle leading to the use of more Neonicotinoids.
Millions of bees is not very many. That’s like one smallish operation.
I’m sure it’s actually a much bigger problem than the numbers they have.
Edit: ah I see now, the article says hundreds of millions of bees, and this post missed a couple words.
this post missed a couple words.
So did the article’s title
Honestly, It’s a pretty major fuck up. It makes the headline inaccurate by 2 orders of magnitude…
Cause a million bees is what… A dozen hives? I just googled it and it’s literally my body weight in bees. Which now that I’ve said it out loud, is sort of terrifying, but you know what I mean.
who needs eggs or honey if you can have rollingcoal and chaosfacism?
Just keep using Roundup, nothing to see here, move along.
Wild bees or farmed bees?
Doesn’t matter in my opinion when it comes to the western honeybee. They’re not native to the Americas. But they’re specifically citing beekeepers.
I literally saw a dead bumble bee out on the pavement yesterday… soo not good…
Believe it or not, bees aren’t supposed to be immortal. Dead bees on random pavements are just sign that bees exist around somewhere.
Not good would be not finding anyone, drad or alive.
