Microblog Memes

That'd be same as we are losing potatoes species so we should plant more potatoes. The issue is the wild/native variety is lot more various and different than the industrial potatoes we plant.

Or a more extreme case: we're losing wolves so let's breed more dogs.

Bees used for honey making is just a small fragment of bee species humans use. While the native bees are various,and have different patterns of living and polination

That's the confusing thing, right? But the honeybees that beekeepers manage aren't necessarily the same bee species that live natively in that area. The european honeybee is the most common bee species to keep because we know how to handle them and how to extract more honey from them. When these bees are introduced to an ecosystem they start competing with already existing pollinators, including native bees that may have different behaviours including preferences for plants, they can have different predators and can impact ecosystems in ways that are different to predict.

The best way to actually help the native bees from my understanding is to stop warming the climate, leave certain parts of nature wild and native (seeding native plants and rewilding) and reduce the use of toxic pesticides as these all contribute to the decline. Something that is toxic enough to potentially cause cancer or hurt humans can also hurt or immediately kill smaller creatures that don't have as complex immune systems as humans. The most common pesticides we currently use include effects like seizures, eye damage, organ failure, etc for humans and wildlife is continuously and repeatedly exposed to these substances as we cannot really tell them to stay away from farms and fields. Say one wild bee is out exploring in close proximity to an area that is freshly sprayed then brings it home to the hive.

There are all of these different political areas and systems that all affect nature. If you want to help make a positive impact then the most important part is to pick one place to put your energy so it doesn't get overwhelming. It is all complex and overwhelming for a reason.

As someone who has worked with bees, not common. Most beekeepers should be keeping the queen there by maintaining the correct amount of honey store for hive size. There are queen excluder boxes you can use to protect/encourage new queens to storm, etc etc etc

I'd never heard of wing clipping. That would be terrible. I'm frankly against using smoke with bees and have worked with a few people who also feel the same way. Buy local

Yes, it is shitty. So are most things we do to other creatures on earth to prioritize our own survival and well being.

It was only somewhat recently in human history that we've moved past the point of needing these systems to survive. Now things like veganism have few to little downsides, except that we're entrenched in the way we used to do things.

i think the amount and the size of lawns without any flowers affects the natural pollinator population at much greater capacity.

That's where the term "honey boo" comes from. It is intended to evoke images of honey-crusted bee nipples which peasants used to give what looked like a little kiss to get the delicious honey crystals off (they were NOT allowed to otherwise touch the honey, on pain of death, because it belonged to the nearest bishop, and wars were fought over where bishops chose to go for walks, leading to them to having to follow careful paths that kept them from getting closer to bee milking areas than the bishop that earned that honey fair and square by telling those peasants to milk it out of those bees. These paths often cut diagonally through fields, which explains something else but I can't remember what, but it is a really fun fact, so please enjoy it even if it isn't fully complete).

Wait... Are you saying if this happened someone likely learned these "bee facts" from an AI? That is painful. I swear those things are fucking intelligence cancer.

I mean:

BEEEEZZZZZZ

I mean, it's not that unbelivable that someone that thinks like this exist, i once met a person that belived that the sun and the moon where the same thing and the moon was actually the other half of the sun

(Which is crazy considering you can see both in the sky sometimes during winter)

i mean, i've seen people say much more stupid things. The existence of the person described is not improbable

FWIW though, a honeybee produces about a single teaspoon in its whole life

Keep in mind though that a honey bee worker only has a working lifespan of a few weeks (though they can survive for months if born during the cold off seasons where they stay huddled in the hive), and each hive has between 40,000 and 80,000 bees. Kept hives also don't need as much of the honey they produce since the beekeeper can control for climate, colony size, and other factors that increase consumption.

Pushing out native bees is definitely a major problem, I agree on that, though beekeepers should be managing their colonies to prevent them from splitting and creating new hives.

https://youtu.be/tKweqxWUC38

TIL about centrifugal honey extractors

The source of most of my bee knowledge: