A new survey says America's honeybee hives just staggered through the second highest death rate on record, with beekeepers losing nearly half of their managed colonies. But using costly measures to create new colonies, beekeepers are somehow keeping afloat. Thursday’s University of Maryland and Auburn University survey says that even though 48% of colonies were lost in the year that ended April 1, the number of United States honeybee colonies remained relatively stable. Honeybees are crucial to the food supply, pollinating more than 100 of the crops we eat, including nuts, vegetables and fruits. Scientists blame parasites, pesticides, starvation and climate change for large die-offs.
  • dudeami0@lemmy.dudeami.winEnglish
    242·
    1 year ago

    This wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone seeing the conditions pollinator honey bees are kept in. Most are distrubuted in cardboard boxes to fields to be used for pollination. Once they pollinate the fields they aren’t really of concern to the farmers anymore. In my opinion, this is like saying half of cattle die every year, but populations remain stable. It’s kind of by design, and in some cases the goal.

    • madapiarist@lemmy.caEnglish
      61·
      1 year ago

      That’s a temporary nuc box for live bee sales. Noone takes these to pollinate crops. Once they are done pollination, the grower might not care anymore, but the beekeeper certainly does. They either move on to another crop or return home to produce honey.

      • dudeami0@lemmy.dudeami.winEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        Every field I’ve been in has these boxes distributed for pollinating. From the product page:

        There is no need for box returns and frame exchanges when cardboard nuc boxes are a fraction of the cost of wooden nucs.

        So it’s sold as a bonus that this does not need to be returned, so it’s common enough practice. I know they are suppose to be used to seed new boxes, but farmers generally don’t care. They want the flowers pollinated, the bees will probably die from the pesticides so no use in worrying about them.

        Edit: There is an article from the guardian on the harmful conditions bees endure on almond farms. I am near smaller farms, so maybe this practice (of using nucs to pollinate) is not as wide spread as I thought. Regardless, bees are routinely mistreated in various agricultural settings.

        • madapiarist@lemmy.caEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          They might look similar, but they are not. Hives are graded and a 4 or 5 framer nuc wouldn’t make the cut. Growers don’t buy bees for pollination, they rent them. And yes, they are sometimes damaged by careless pesticide application.

    • fireweed@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thank you. It drives me wild that “save the bees!” campaigns seem to be all about domesticated bees and not the mason bees, bumblebees, and other native species. Also drives me wild: when folks recommend planting invasive species because “they support pollinators.” Yeah so do many native species; wtf do you think insects ate for millions of years before we showed up?

  • macracanthorhynchus@mander.xyzEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Honey bee population counts are sometimes hard to interpret, since many colonies are split in half in the spring, with a new queen inserted into the queenless half to create new colonies. Thus, the number of colonies can be high, then low after lots of winter deaths, then high again after new colonies are created, then low again after the following winter, etc. Peering through those fluxtuations, it’s clear that (1) honey bees aren’t anywhere close to going extinct, but (2) it’s still a lot harder to keep a bee colony alive than it was decades ago. New parasites, new pesticides, lower food availability due to habitat loss and/or climate change, etc. Commercial beekeepers who manage thousands of hives also have very different pressures and their bees have different stressors than people who keep a few (or a few dozen) bee colonies. This report that more colonies died than in previous years means that beekeepers’ practices have a lot of room for improvement, but the bees won’t all be gone by this time next year.

    If anyone is interested in further discussion about bees and beekeeping, you’re welcome over at !beekeeping@mander.xyz