‘Could become a death spiral’: scientists discover what’s driving record die-offs of US honeybees
Experts scrambling to understand losses in hives across the country are finally identifying the culprits. And the damage to farmed bees is a sign of trouble for wild bees too
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Those who understand ecology on a level that doesn't have cheap commodities as a prerequisite understand there's a straightforward solution to this. Restore natural pollinator habitat (fuck your lawn) and stop treating them like slaves.
Lawns aren't the problem, it is agriculture. Now the problem is affordable food vs the environment.
Lawns aren't the problem but they are a problem
I bought 5 pounds of clover seed this spring and spread it through my lawn... and it's amazing. I plan on getting 20 pounds this fall and doing the rest of my lawn, and probably going to get some creeping red thyme for my fence rows.
How does that fix a virus spread by parasitic mites?
There are diverse pollinators that are native. These honeybees are not native to the Americas. Having a spread of native species do the job should be more resistant to these kinds of infestations.
Okay but how do you create billions of diverse native species in South Dakota and ship them across the entire nation while they're all actively hostile to each other?
You would need to create competitive local pollinator markets in every state or risk creating a famine by banning Honeybees.
Like it or not, nature cannot handle Humans in the numbers we currently exist in and Honeybees are a part of our food chain to sustain those numbers.
Well we could stop dousing our planet in poison just for weed free and pest free grass, for starters. I know it's not as bad as what we use on farm crops, but every little bit counts. The bees are stressed and dying because of that stress.
Let me be clear: natural lawns are a good thing, and my wife and I are converting over piece by piece. However, I think people jumped to that conclusion here because they're already preconditioned to it. Natural lawns are never going to undo the damage caused by overuse of agricultural pesticides.
Yeah, just because we can reduce our use of pesticides doesn't suddenly make all of the bee colonies we killed with it come back to life. I get that.
But nature is resilient and if we stop dousing everything in nerve toxins then maybe we'll see the ecological web of insect life doing its thing again. That improves the soil and plant life, gives food to small critters, and both of those indirectly helps the bees. So it kind of does undo the damage in a roundabout way.
You need to convince farmers of that, not people who own suburban lawns. Though people with suburban lawns should convert over, their affect is going to be small compared to hundreds of acres of farm run by a few people.
Yeah I already said that in my first comment.
Tangentially related question:
What is the latency in the soil for this stuff? I spent 8 years working on getting my yard back to a pollinator friendly environment but we are moving now and starting over with a basic grass yard. I am assuming the previous owners were spraying all kinds of shit as we are out in the burbs.
It’s pretty quick. Insects come back in about two years, although it can be a little weird- you may get massive population growth of bugs you aren’t thrilled about ( we had a year of millions of earwigs first)
then predators (one year was baby lizard mania )
Bumblebees really took off about 3 years in. Birds too.
Do you have any resources you can share for what you’ve done and will do again? My yard right now is very sparse. Literally no grass, but has 3-4ft tall weeds, moss, rocks, and a lot of mushrooms. I don’t necessarily care if I ever have a perfect lawn, but I’d like something else… more appealing.
By no means am I an expert so do some reading for your area. That said, here is how I set up my space.
I am a big fan of planting stuff that you can eat, that attracts polinators, and is low maintenance.
We have a couple varieties of basil that we let flower that brings bees in and are perennials and rosemary that flowers I have some really big mint plants that the bees love too. I basically do nothing to any of those and just let them ride. I have a couple of citrus plants that flower and bring in lots of insects. I planted grape vines that the birds love and have been really fun for my kids. They also loved the blackberry vines.
Any time I have the big clumps of clover in the lawn part of our yard, I move them to the flower beds. We also have several jasmine plants that crawl around.
I tend to do the local heirloom wildflower mixes in our side yard areas which was super great to cover up the utility boxes in our yard.
Heirloom stuff is great, I have several plants that I have re-grown from seeds inside fruit that the pests got to. 100% recommend.
I like to keep citronella and lemongrass around to help with the mosquitos. The lemongrass probably doesnt do anything unless you burn it but you can pick the citronella leaves and rub them between your hands then rub your hands on your skin and that seems to work.
Keep a fountain or bird bath around for the bugs/birds. If you can do it low to the ground, you can get frogs and other stuff too.
I tend to keep some brush in a pile for some of the other critters like salmanders, the little garden snakes, skinks, etc. You can get rats/mice though so ymmv. Rock piles are also good.
When the oak/ash trees drop leaves, I mulch them with the mower and collect them for use around the tree bases, that is supposed to be good for fireflys and stuff.
We have not watered our garden at all this year.
If you can find native plants, use them because they are already adapted to your area.
I tried to do microclover for our yard but since we had grass already it didn't really take off. I also tried using buffalo grass with the same result. I do tend to let our grass go longer, its better for water conservation and I refuse to use clean water for grass growth.
For compost, we do table scraps mixed with leaves and yard clippings. I didn't do it properly and ended up accidentally planting 10,000 papaya plants in our yard that the freeze killed off.
I have some blue salvia looking tree thing that is constantly covered in pollinators that grew super quick. They plant them on the highway medians around Houston and its been awesome. The flower smell great too.
For compost, we do table scraps mixed with leaves and yard clippings. I didn't do it properly and ended up accidentally planting 10,000 papaya plants in our yard that the freeze killed off.
Thanks for the giggle.
I'm curious, when the lawn is kept natural, doesn't it have a lot of ticks?
My lawn isn't totally natural because I mow it, but I don't use any chemicals. Despite some trees and shrubs, my yard doesn't have ticks. We have grubs, mice, shrews, squirrels, birds, and occasional poison ivy that we pull up, but no ticks. They are in the park (with forest) a couple blocks away, but not in the trimmed lawns in my chunk of suburbia.
from Wikipedia:
Ticks like shady, moist leaf litter with an overstory of trees or shrubs and, in the spring, they deposit their eggs into such places allowing larvae to emerge in the fall and crawl into low-lying vegetation. The 3 meter boundary closest to the lawn's edge are a tick migration zone, where 82% of tick nymphs in lawns are found.
In context of bees isn't the trim important? I mean, for the grass to have flowers for the pollinators, shouldn't it be untrimmed? And hence prone to inviting ticks?
You are correct, but I mow kinda high and my lawn has lots of low flowering weeds and flowering shrubs. In the spring, there is patch of ... probably purslane? and daffodils on the border. Then the comfrey has its first bloom, then the clover and dandelions. Right now there's more dandelions and comfrey's second bloom. Next comes the invasive morning glorys and rose of sharon. There are a bunch of other things that flower, like wild strawberries, wild violets, and yarrow that is stanted by getting chopped down every week or two -- but there's more and I don't know all their names.
We also have some type of carpenter/bumble bee trying hard to destroy the edge of the porch overhang. I'm just letting them do their thing and plan on repairing it if/when it becomes a structural issue.
Probably not unless you have lots or animals crossing it. Ticks require hosts to feed and transport over significant distance I think.
Clearly what we need to do is ban plastic straws some more.
Did you read the article? Freeing the slaves gives them the capacity to recover.
Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex, says the study provided no evidence that the viral load was higher in weaker colonies. “Almost all bee colonies have these viruses, but they only do significant harm when the colony is stressed.”
That would save colonies near suburban areas. That would not save colonies surrounded by hundreds of acres of farm. There is far, far more farmland in the US than suburban yards.
You do have a point.
Slaves? Oh FFS. Have you talked to the bees lately? Maybe they like having nice manmade hives.
They don't. The process of getting them to make honey is based on driving them to be in panicked, disaster recovery mindset all the time.
Well, Scott, I'm beginning to think you're no apiarist at all.
I think honey is just the byproduct of these colonies. Their primary use is to loan them out to farms to pollinate the crops.
I believe it would lead to fewer chances for the mites to migrate between colonies - i.e. more flowers == less bees per flower == less chance for a mite to jump from a bee to a flower to a bee/different hive.
That's just a guess tho and my gut also says that climate change isn't helping.
