Former beekeeper here. At first glance, this sounds like a useful supplement for bees. It might be great. But my immediate reaction is that it sounds a bit "Clockwork Orange"-y ... in the same...
Exemplary
Former beekeeper here.
At first glance, this sounds like a useful supplement for bees. It might be great. But my immediate reaction is that it sounds a bit "Clockwork Orange"-y ... in the same sense that people are better off eating healthy food, than taking vitamin supplements to make up for a bad diet.
Which might not be that bad in isolation, but modern beekeeping has been one step after another of "artificial almost-as-good replacement of what they actually need", for decades.
For commercial beekeepers these days, honey production is an after-thought. Only something like 25% of their income comes from honey and honey products. The vast majority of income comes from pollination services, which involves packing up hundreds and thousands of hives onto semis and moving them across the country, several times each season.
The almond crop in California is the beekeepers' "gold rush" ... for the past 20 years, there have literally not been enough bees on the entire continent of North America available to pollinate the almond crop. Every year, they try to find new ways to get even more bees down there, importing them from around the world (and quite likely, spreading new-and-improved diseases and parasites in the process).
And that one month of pollinating almond trees often accounts for more than 50% of the money earned by most beekeepers for the entire year.
Then, they spend the rest of the year moving the hives around to other important pollination crops. The only other one I know of, off the top of my head, is the cranberry pollination in Wisconsin; that's another big one, but I know there are many others.
I guess most people know about the problems with pesticides and lack of natural forage and colony collapse disorder and such-like, but I don't think most people realize the kind of "life" bees live. They're just not meant to spend 48-72 hours locked up in a semi, tooling down the highway ... then spend a couple of weeks in one climate/ecosystem ... then a month in a completely different region ... then a third ... all over the continent.
Even without all of the added stresses of pesticides and etc, just the regular day-to-day life of domesticated honeybees these days is just ridiculously unnatural.
Yeah I'm a little concerned that over-dependence on something like this might have some dire effects for the bees still being good pollinators. Still, if it's used in the right way like an...
Yeah I'm a little concerned that over-dependence on something like this might have some dire effects for the bees still being good pollinators. Still, if it's used in the right way like an additive to the attractants already being applied on crop blossoms it could be helpful in getting the colonies the nutrients they need to fully self-sustain.
That sounds super sad for bees. They're not tiny machines, they're living critters with a family and love of balls and sunshine and outdoors. Dumb question but why pay so much money to ship in...
That sounds super sad for bees. They're not tiny machines, they're living critters with a family and love of balls and sunshine and outdoors.
Dumb question but why pay so much money to ship in bees instead of just raising enough bees per orchard?
I was about to start beekeeping when everything went sideways with the COVID-19 lockdowns, did a bunch of homework, attended the local beekeeping society meetings in an agricultural region... The...
I was about to start beekeeping when everything went sideways with the COVID-19 lockdowns, did a bunch of homework, attended the local beekeeping society meetings in an agricultural region...
The answer to your question that I got is something like this:
In undeveloped forests and meadows, something is blooming almost all the time from first thaw to first snow. Trees (yes, most trees are pollen- and nectar-producers, including conifers), bulbs, shrubs, grasses - the flowering cycles overlap with one another and there's a steady food supply until the bees go mostly dormant with cold.
In agricultural monocrops, you may have miles on end devoted to a single species that all blooms at once. Given at most a couple weeks of flowers for commercial fruit trees, the bees would starve if they're not moved to another location and crop with blooms.
It's really not desirable for ecosystems or sustainable agriculture that everything but a single crop species is exterminated. It's made a huge dent in insect and bird populations, destroys soil, encourages plant pathogens, and generally makes the world a bleaker place. It's not surprising that honeybees are having a harder time locating the nutrients they need.
I've got friends heavily into biodynamic farming. There's some woo, but the basic principles of maintaining wild strips or intentionally bee-friendly plantings between crop rows, minimal tilling, encouraging a healthy soil biome, keeping bees (not too many) locally, etc. are really paying off for them. The ones who keep bees still have some colony loss. There's always someone (farmers or homeowners) in the vicinity using neonicotinoid-treated seeds or pesticide sprays. But they're not seeing 50+% colony loss, either.
Everything leading up to the rockets in Interstellar is a pretty decent look at what the American midwest is gonna look like in less than 50 years.... A barren wasteland that can just barely grow...
Everything leading up to the rockets in Interstellar is a pretty decent look at what the American midwest is gonna look like in less than 50 years....
A barren wasteland that can just barely grow corn, for now.
This bee supplement could be pretty huge if there's no adverse affects. I'm still really curious what specific wildflowers offer the highest amount of missing sterols the bees need though.
This bee supplement could be pretty huge if there's no adverse affects. I'm still really curious what specific wildflowers offer the highest amount of missing sterols the bees need though.
Former beekeeper here.
At first glance, this sounds like a useful supplement for bees. It might be great. But my immediate reaction is that it sounds a bit "Clockwork Orange"-y ... in the same sense that people are better off eating healthy food, than taking vitamin supplements to make up for a bad diet.
Which might not be that bad in isolation, but modern beekeeping has been one step after another of "artificial almost-as-good replacement of what they actually need", for decades.
For commercial beekeepers these days, honey production is an after-thought. Only something like 25% of their income comes from honey and honey products. The vast majority of income comes from pollination services, which involves packing up hundreds and thousands of hives onto semis and moving them across the country, several times each season.
The almond crop in California is the beekeepers' "gold rush" ... for the past 20 years, there have literally not been enough bees on the entire continent of North America available to pollinate the almond crop. Every year, they try to find new ways to get even more bees down there, importing them from around the world (and quite likely, spreading new-and-improved diseases and parasites in the process).
And that one month of pollinating almond trees often accounts for more than 50% of the money earned by most beekeepers for the entire year.
Then, they spend the rest of the year moving the hives around to other important pollination crops. The only other one I know of, off the top of my head, is the cranberry pollination in Wisconsin; that's another big one, but I know there are many others.
I guess most people know about the problems with pesticides and lack of natural forage and colony collapse disorder and such-like, but I don't think most people realize the kind of "life" bees live. They're just not meant to spend 48-72 hours locked up in a semi, tooling down the highway ... then spend a couple of weeks in one climate/ecosystem ... then a month in a completely different region ... then a third ... all over the continent.
Even without all of the added stresses of pesticides and etc, just the regular day-to-day life of domesticated honeybees these days is just ridiculously unnatural.
Yeah I'm a little concerned that over-dependence on something like this might have some dire effects for the bees still being good pollinators. Still, if it's used in the right way like an additive to the attractants already being applied on crop blossoms it could be helpful in getting the colonies the nutrients they need to fully self-sustain.
That sounds super sad for bees. They're not tiny machines, they're living critters with a family and love of balls and sunshine and outdoors.
Dumb question but why pay so much money to ship in bees instead of just raising enough bees per orchard?
I was about to start beekeeping when everything went sideways with the COVID-19 lockdowns, did a bunch of homework, attended the local beekeeping society meetings in an agricultural region...
The answer to your question that I got is something like this:
It's really not desirable for ecosystems or sustainable agriculture that everything but a single crop species is exterminated. It's made a huge dent in insect and bird populations, destroys soil, encourages plant pathogens, and generally makes the world a bleaker place. It's not surprising that honeybees are having a harder time locating the nutrients they need.
I've got friends heavily into biodynamic farming. There's some woo, but the basic principles of maintaining wild strips or intentionally bee-friendly plantings between crop rows, minimal tilling, encouraging a healthy soil biome, keeping bees (not too many) locally, etc. are really paying off for them. The ones who keep bees still have some colony loss. There's always someone (farmers or homeowners) in the vicinity using neonicotinoid-treated seeds or pesticide sprays. But they're not seeing 50+% colony loss, either.
Everything leading up to the rockets in Interstellar is a pretty decent look at what the American midwest is gonna look like in less than 50 years....
A barren wasteland that can just barely grow corn, for now.
It's cheaper to ship them than maintain them on site for the 11 months of the year they aren't needed for a given crop's pollination.
Capitalist efficiency at its finest.
Damn the long term consequences, we can save a buck now.
This bee supplement could be pretty huge if there's no adverse affects. I'm still really curious what specific wildflowers offer the highest amount of missing sterols the bees need though.