Bees live less than two months, so if 80% of bees died in the last 8 months that would suggest a sharp recent increase.
I’m not saying there isn’t a bee crisis, just that this factoid is very badly worded.
We are so cooked
Submitted 11 months ago by PixelatedCleric@lemmy.dbzer0.com to [deleted]
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/d82a20f2-a652-49e3-96af-b81c62a4a7c0.webp
Comments
skisnow@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Akrenion@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
Without looking at data it could also mean “beginning 8 months ago we noticed a downwards trend of bees compared to the prior year(s) that culminates to an 80% decline at the time of writing.”
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
We’re pretty sure it’s the Monsanto pesticide and anyone who suggests it is hit with a litigation threat. Curiously, as we’re speed-breeding domesticated bees the wild bees are dying out faster, so as the bee population dwindles it also becomes more domesticated and less wild. I know that’s a bad thing, but I am fuzzy on the why details.
I’m a brown thumb, and plants wilt as my shadow falls on them, but if you’re a green-thumb, plant pollinators, which will help the bees.
Also plant milkweed for the monarchs.
Kalysta@lemm.ee 11 months ago
It’s Bayer’s now. Monsanto sold it to Bayer when they started getting heat for neonicotinoids killing all the bees.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’ll hop in here and add that your locality probably does pesticide fogging/spraying. For what it is worth, you can ask them not you spray your property. Make some local wildflower patches in your yard. Less stuff you have to mow, more food and habitat for native birds and insects. It’s a win-win.
MintyAnt@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Native plant patches can also absorb some of the harmful crap like pesticides to a degree. It does help.
mlg@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Some beekeepers actually mentioned that they’ve been scraping the beeswax clean off their hives more frequently because its known that the beeswax collects pesticides and herbicides over time which affects the colony due to exposure.
The problem is its not just monsanto acid, there’s a ton of other issues also correlated like weather/climate, seasonal flowering, untreated parasites, bacteria, etc.
We’ve literally nuked the environment so hard that even if we fix one problem, the population will not make a full bounce back (although I would think monsanto is the biggest threat)
Biggest scam of this century was corporate produce monoliths convincing people Organic was about health and not the fact that it doesn’t use a scorched earth policy and scam one off hybrid plant seeds to grow food which has been setting us up for a widespread fammine for decades.
Some random superweed is gonna crossbreed with some rapid out of control growth plant and wipe out half of the food chain.
spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
Also, the domesticated bees are generally honeybees. And unfortunately, honeybee and wild bees don’t fulfill the same rile, so even if we replaced wild bees with honeybees 1:1, we still wouldn’t be able to polinate everything.
MintyAnt@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Honeybees cant buzz pollinate for shit, lazy ass bee
MintyAnt@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Plant native. Plants that are native to your ecosystem. Those are the true pollinator powerhouse plants that bees need to survive
JackbyDev@programming.dev 11 months ago
I forget the term for non native, non invasive plants (naturalized?) but those are good too. Native is best, of course. I see a ton of carpenter bees (native bees to my area) on my red clover (non native, non invasive).
rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio 11 months ago
I definitely don’t want to downplay a crisis, but I feel like I’ve been seeing headlines saying “all the bees are dying and we don’t know why” every year for nearly 20 years now.
I’m no bee expert. Just seems to me, based on the headlines, bees would’ve been extinct 10 years ago.
Some cursory searching led me to Colony Collapse Disorder which, apparently, has no agreed-upon cause. Apparently devastating losses to honey bee colonies started being reported around 1900. But it also mentions:
In 2024, the United States Census of Agriculture reported an all-time high in commercial honey bee hives (mostly in Texas), making them the fastest-growing livestock segment in the country.[38]
Link to the source cited there: https://archive.is/nfeb2
Apparently last year saw the largest honey bee populations in US history. Though apparently that huge boom in honey bee population is a threat to other native pollinators, so I guess that presents its own unique problems.
safesyrup@feddit.org 11 months ago
The issue is OP is spreading misinformation. You‘re right, we haven‘t lost 80% of the bee population, because this was a hypothetical statement in the article saying it would have consequences if it happened.
raod_guitar@feddit.org 11 months ago
The person in the article says you can’t keep up the industry if 80% of the bees die every year.
Jesus_666@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Usually, when people talk about bees dying, they mean wild bees. Unlike honey bees they aren’t cultivated by us. They also tend to be better pollinators than honey bees, adapted to local plants that honey bees can’t handle well.
GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Remember when our biggest fear was killer bees? What a quaint time in our history.
Glifted@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Honey bees are dying but you can help native bees in your area. Find out what they like and plant that shit. Also just letting weeds grow helps a lot of species.
I get leafcutter bees at my place as well as a few other solitary species
shalafi@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Making bee hotels for solitary bees is child’s play. Take a chunk of wood, drill holes, hang in a tree.
Technical aspects:
- Don’t use pressure treated lumber, anything else is fine.
- Look up “solitary bee hotel” for your area to see what size holes to make for the locals. In any case, it’s going to be a variety of different sizes to cover all your bases. Doesn’t have to bee (heh) perfect.
- Make the holes, especially the edges, nice and smooth. They’re not dumb enough to nest their if the hole is raggedy and might jack up their wings.
That’s mostly it. You can research easily enough in an hour or less There’s a woman on YouTube that sells bee hotels and has solid advice for making your own.
Damned satisfying when you find the holes plugged with wax! You have new tenants! Stupid easy and basically free.
ChillPenguin@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I can’t do that! What about my nice green lawn? /s
thisisnotgoingwell@programming.dev 11 months ago
My city will put a letter in my mailbox telling me to get rid of weeds and fine me $150 if I don’t. Rip
BigLime@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
Weeds? I thought they were pests
daggermoon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Weeds aren’t really a thing. A weed is just a plant we don’t like.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 11 months ago
As long as you mow them it’s all good. Just having a yard with anything than just a monoculture grass is better
ramenshaman@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t like this meme
can@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Also, bees usually survive cold winters, which could be a thought for last few months.
PixelatedCleric@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Best comment lmao
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 11 months ago
The people need their ads (or whatever the reasoning is), show some compassion, in a few decades they’ll only be seeing the same Nuka Cola ad everywhere.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Most domesticated bee species aren’t native to the US. It’s quite possible they are just getting bee-ported.
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Was it to make room to fit the 690% increase in newborns?
safesyrup@feddit.org 11 months ago
Nowhere in the article does it say we lost 80% of the bee population. You are spreading misinformation
Fallofturkey@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You’re correct. The quote is "If we lose 80% of our bees every year, the industry cannot survive, which means we cannot pollinate at the scale that we need to produce food in the United States."
Zarmeck@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
It does, in a quote.
turnip@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Not on the current scenario.
collapse_already@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
Bees aren’t the only arthropods having this problem, but for most of the other non-pollinators people seem to think "good less bugs to bother me. " I guess we should just give up on the survival of the food chain.
The news for insects is not entirely bad, emerald ash borers are finding the ability to survive in areas that were formerly too cold for them. This allows them to kill more trees turning them into kindling for lightning strikes and other fire starting events.
Who could have known that fucking with our habitat might have negative consequences for us?
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
The news for insects is not entirely bad, emerald ash borers are finding the ability to survive in areas that were formerly too cold for them. This allows them to kill more trees turning them into kindling for lightning strikes and other fire starting events.
Had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
ALostInquirer@lemm.ee 11 months ago
hello frog, that is sad to hear, have you tried calling doompost?
(how is there no !doompost??)
PixelatedCleric@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
In fairness, most of the news communities are doomposts by themselves.
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
Reality has a doom bias.
Enzy@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Not the bees!!!
iAvicenna@lemmy.world 11 months ago
make sure you retract words like bias and gender from your articles and they will come back. they are just extremely bigoted.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Awww fuck… Bees are mostly colonies of females living in harmony?
The2b@lemmy.vg 11 months ago
Remember that honey-producing bees are terrible pollenators compared to the specific pollenators who don’t produce honey. The honey producing bees being kept by everyone are artifically outcompeting the specific pollenators, which are what we really need to be supporting.
conditional_soup@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I was watching some of my native plants and noticed a fair amount of house flies crowling on them. It turns out that flies as a group are the second most important pollinator behind bees as a group.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Okay, but how do I personally monetize non-honey making bees? Sure, the general ecology needs this, but what’s in it for me, right this instant?
hedge_lord@lemmy.world 11 months ago
A bee petting zoo! Bumblebees are very cute and very fluffy. Having a petting zoo would help people get I touch with nature, and if the guests are too belligerent about it then the bees will just sting them. I think that bumblebees might also not die after stinging, and if so they’d learn how to fight humans. When the time is right you can unleash a swarm of cute fluffy bees trained in anti-human warfare. You could use them to crush any competition. If you still want more money you can become a bee-based supervillain and Rob banks or something.
NewNewAccount@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Hey, it doesn’t need to be right this instant. It could instead be projected revenue next quarter.
boonhet@lemm.ee 11 months ago
All you can do is add to pollen I guess. Plant seeds of native plants that bees love. Indiscriminately in random places.
Maybe someone else has some better ideas.
Kepion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
Those bees sure have plenty of legs for plenty of bootstraps
shittydwarf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Have you tried persecuting all the scientists yet??
vk6flab@lemmy.radio 11 months ago
They just got fired, together with anyone who might begin to fix this.
Doctor_Satan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
And the US government banned words related to climate change from any future studies. If your grant proposal includes those keywords, it’ll get denied automatically without a human even looking at it.
Fandangalo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Vespair@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Did Mark Wahlberg hate crime all the bees to death?
Thorry84@feddit.nl 11 months ago
roguetrick@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The running thought is these non-native European honeybees couldn’t find forage at the right times due to climate change and these massive commercial hives died.
conditional_soup@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Okay, but European honeybees in the US aren’t exactly new afaik. That’s like all of the sudden, 80% of wild horses up and die and the answer is “well, they’re an introduced species, so it only makes sense”.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I’m not a bee, you’re not a bee, so it sounds like a them problem.
(On the internet, no one knows you’re a bee.)
ceenote@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You can say whatever you want about them in text. As long as you don’t dance it, they’ll be none the wiser.
disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Probably the same reason we had 40+ tornadoes, huge hailstorms, floods, and drought-enabled wildfires in six adjacent states within 48 hours. Anthropogenic climate change is real, whether you believe in it or not.
Doctor_Satan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Anthropogenic climate change is real, whether you believe in it or not.
You know who believes in climate change? Fossil fuel companies, insurance companies, the military industrial complex, and every single politician talking about buying or taking Greenland by force. All the very same people who have spent the past half century publicly denying the existence of anthropogenic climate change. Not only do they believe in it, but they are designing their profit models around it at our expense.
arakhis_@feddit.org 11 months ago
[deleted]grue@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Slap her in the face for me.
disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Would a graph help? statista.com/…/divergence-of-ocean-temperatures-f…
saltnotsugar@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I know it’s likely pesticides, but have we officially ruled out bee assassins?
RaptorBenn@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
We know why.
docringeling@feddit.org 11 months ago
Why?
RaptorBenn@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Overuse of pesticides and herbicodes has dimished low level plant, fungal and bacterial life, not only is it bad for all insects and the biosphere in general. But it has been proven (see Paul Stamets and others work) that bees gain a host of immunities and benefits from this low level plant, fungal and bacterial life.
Polution, deforrestation and climate change obviously have a part to play too.
jim3692@discuss.online 11 months ago
Because someone told us
Scribbd@feddit.nl 11 months ago
You know.