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.
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.
Still technically millions. Could have said dozens, as in millions of dozens I suppose as well.
A few bees, as in 20 gazillion.
We are the extinction event
Yup. The wealthy have us fighting culture wars while they strip the planet.
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.
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.
I think Black Mirror came up with a solution of sorts to this.
ATC cuts are taking their toll on all flying craft.
There is probably lots of things effecting the bee population. Maybe it’s time to look for alternatives and create reservations to insure the bees survival.
Or we could put all our eggs in one basket. It’s not like all the baskets of eggs aren’t going into a truck and driven off a cliff, when talking climate change.
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I got a call from a friend who had 20,000 beehives at the start of the winter, and he’s at less than 1,000. He said ‘This is it, I’m done.’
Maybe leave them their honey for the winter instead of taking it and replacing it with shitty sugar water?
It’s pretty obvious when your hive dies from starvation.
I lost my hives this year due to me being a newish beekeeper and some very aggressive yellow jackets doing too much damage to my hives…. before I intervened
