<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" > <channel> <title> Comments on: Bees are More Important than You Think </title> <atom:link href="https://junkscience.com/2014/04/bees-are-more-important-than-you-think/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /> <link>https://junkscience.com/2014/04/bees-are-more-important-than-you-think/</link> <description>All the junk that’s fit to debunk.</description> <lastBuildDate>Mon, 07 Apr 2014 20:55:21 +0000</lastBuildDate> <sy:updatePeriod> hourly </sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency> 1 </sy:updateFrequency> <generator>https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2</generator> <item> <title> By: GH05T </title> <link>https://junkscience.com/2014/04/bees-are-more-important-than-you-think/#comment-8317976315264140788</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[GH05T]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 07 Apr 2014 20:55:21 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://junkscience.com/?p=54095#comment-8317976315264140788</guid> <description><![CDATA[I like the phrase “Scientists are discovering that multiple issues affect bee health.” This truth has been known to beekeepers for thousands of years. No one familiar with basic biology should suspect otherwise. It’s only the alarmist, ratings-seeking media and faux scientific reporting that allege there might be some unifying mystery disease the world has never seen before, but we’ve already covered all of that. http://junkscience.com/2014/02/06/bee-colony-no-crisis-big-surprise/ All the talk of “natural habitat” and “unnatural stresses of travel” is inconsequential because these are farm raised bees. There hasn’t been a natural day in their life. There would be fewer bees if humans weren’t raising them. Every farmed asset takes annual losses that change from year to year. Sometimes you have a bad year; sometimes you have a good year. Bees that are bred for transport dying during transport is similar to produce going bad before it's purchased at the grocery store. Competent farmers deliberately over-produce to account for expected losses. Reducing those losses is a great way to improve efficiency, but the cost of implementing loss prevention must be lower than the cost incurred through the losses. It’s up to the business owners to make those decisions. If the annual loss of bees being transported was really so high as to endanger the profitability of the industry, they would be investing more money into the obvious solutions already mentioned here. As it stands, search "California beekeeping" and you'll find there are are loads of apiaries in the state and their number is growing in no small part due to the almond industry’s demand. Another quick tidbit, "On average during the year, about one percent of a colony's worker bees die naturally per day". Is it really that unusual to lose 15-20% of the bees being transported considering how short their life-span is?]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I like the phrase “Scientists are discovering that multiple issues affect bee health.” This truth has been known to beekeepers for thousands of years. No one familiar with basic biology should suspect otherwise. It’s only the alarmist, ratings-seeking media and faux scientific reporting that allege there might be some unifying mystery disease the world has never seen before, but we’ve already covered all of that.<br /> <a href="http://junkscience.com/2014/02/06/bee-colony-no-crisis-big-surprise/" rel="ugc">http://junkscience.com/2014/02/06/bee-colony-no-crisis-big-surprise/</a><br /> All the talk of “natural habitat” and “unnatural stresses of travel” is inconsequential because these are farm raised bees. There hasn’t been a natural day in their life. There would be fewer bees if humans weren’t raising them. Every farmed asset takes annual losses that change from year to year. Sometimes you have a bad year; sometimes you have a good year. Bees that are bred for transport dying during transport is similar to produce going bad before it’s purchased at the grocery store. Competent farmers deliberately over-produce to account for expected losses. Reducing those losses is a great way to improve efficiency, but the cost of implementing loss prevention must be lower than the cost incurred through the losses. It’s up to the business owners to make those decisions.<br /> If the annual loss of bees being transported was really so high as to endanger the profitability of the industry, they would be investing more money into the obvious solutions already mentioned here. As it stands, search “California beekeeping” and you’ll find there are are loads of apiaries in the state and their number is growing in no small part due to the almond industry’s demand.<br /> Another quick tidbit, “On average during the year, about one percent of a colony’s worker bees die naturally per day”. Is it really that unusual to lose 15-20% of the bees being transported considering how short their life-span is?</p> ]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> By: Hank de Carbonel </title> <link>https://junkscience.com/2014/04/bees-are-more-important-than-you-think/#comment-8317976315264140787</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Hank de Carbonel]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 07 Apr 2014 18:24:43 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://junkscience.com/?p=54095#comment-8317976315264140787</guid> <description><![CDATA[I agree, why not develop colonies in California? Another option would be to build suitable transport for bees. We have refer trucks, insulated vans etc. Building the proper vehicle should be simple, knowledge must be readily available.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I agree, why not develop colonies in California? Another option would be to build suitable transport for bees. We have refer trucks, insulated vans etc. Building the proper vehicle should be simple, knowledge must be readily available.</p> ]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> By: Gamecock </title> <link>https://junkscience.com/2014/04/bees-are-more-important-than-you-think/#comment-8317976315264140786</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Gamecock]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sun, 06 Apr 2014 21:26:41 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://junkscience.com/?p=54095#comment-8317976315264140786</guid> <description><![CDATA[I'm not for bees dying. I hope they sell a lot of almonds. Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, I marvel at the irony of our modern world, that we are having trouble with an introduced species, honey bees, that we need to pollinate another introduced species, almonds.]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I’m not for bees dying. I hope they sell a lot of almonds.<br /> Okay, now that I’ve got that out of the way, I marvel at the irony of our modern world, that we are having trouble with an introduced species, honey bees, that we need to pollinate another introduced species, almonds.</p> ]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> By: Smokey </title> <link>https://junkscience.com/2014/04/bees-are-more-important-than-you-think/#comment-8317976315264140785</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Smokey]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sun, 06 Apr 2014 06:46:01 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://junkscience.com/?p=54095#comment-8317976315264140785</guid> <description><![CDATA[In reply to <a href="https://junkscience.com/2014/04/bees-are-more-important-than-you-think/#comment-8317976315264140784">wpress2013</a>. That's a little bit like saying "Everyone who caught food poisoning this year and didn't die from it should be immune in following years," or even "Everyone who survived food poisoning to produce viable offspring later should find those children to be immune." It works that way for some few diseases under certain circumstances, but mostly it just depends on how bad a case you had and how stressed your immune system was at the time. Consider: "AIDS/HIV" has never actually killed anyone at any time; it was whatever follow-on opportunistic illness took advantage of the compromised immune system. Often the fatal illness is something like the flu or pneumonia, and often of what would typically be considered a "low-risk" or "mild" strain. In this case, stressing the colonies as badly as they currently do results in multiple threats -- which might normally be considered minor or avoidable -- reaping a ~30% toll annually. My question would be, why aren't people simply growing the colonies there in California in the first place? It certainly seems like the market is there for it, and having bees in place would remove the incentive for other keepers around the country to expose their hives to that kind of risk. It would also coincidentally lower the chance that these illnesses could hitch cross-country rides to infect bees which would otherwise remain unexposed. Is there something that prevents an expansion of the local/native population beyond current levels, such that "migrant hives" are the only/best solution?]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In reply to <a href="https://junkscience.com/2014/04/bees-are-more-important-than-you-think/#comment-8317976315264140784">wpress2013</a>.</p> <p>That’s a little bit like saying “Everyone who caught food poisoning this year and didn’t die from it should be immune in following years,” or even “Everyone who survived food poisoning to produce viable offspring later should find those children to be immune.” It works that way for some few diseases under certain circumstances, but mostly it just depends on how bad a case you had and how stressed your immune system was at the time.<br /> Consider: “AIDS/HIV” has never actually killed anyone at any time; it was whatever follow-on opportunistic illness took advantage of the compromised immune system. Often the fatal illness is something like the flu or pneumonia, and often of what would typically be considered a “low-risk” or “mild” strain. In this case, stressing the colonies as badly as they currently do results in multiple threats — which might normally be considered minor or avoidable — reaping a ~30% toll annually.<br /> My question would be, why aren’t people simply growing the colonies there in California in the first place? It certainly seems like the market is there for it, and having bees in place would remove the incentive for other keepers around the country to expose their hives to that kind of risk. It would also coincidentally lower the chance that these illnesses could hitch cross-country rides to infect bees which would otherwise remain unexposed. Is there something that prevents an expansion of the local/native population beyond current levels, such that “migrant hives” are the only/best solution?</p> ]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> By: wpress2013 </title> <link>https://junkscience.com/2014/04/bees-are-more-important-than-you-think/#comment-8317976315264140784</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[wpress2013]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sun, 06 Apr 2014 03:47:01 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://junkscience.com/?p=54095#comment-8317976315264140784</guid> <description><![CDATA[The issue I'm not understanding is that ... if there's some chemical or organic (bacterial/viral/etc.) cause that's killing off (for argument's sake) 30 percent of the bees (above baseline deaths) this year, then just about all the remaining ones in the colony should be resistant (ok, let's use that "E" word - "evolved") to that stressor. Ok, it's not a one for one equivalence, but after the first year's 30 percent die off the next year should only be (again, for sake of argument), perhaps five percent above baseline, and then one percent. In a couple of years things should be back to normal, right?]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The issue I’m not understanding is that … if there’s some chemical or organic (bacterial/viral/etc.) cause that’s killing off (for argument’s sake) 30 percent of the bees (above baseline deaths) this year, then just about all the remaining ones in the colony should be resistant (ok, let’s use that “E” word – “evolved”) to that stressor. Ok, it’s not a one for one equivalence, but after the first year’s 30 percent die off the next year should only be (again, for sake of argument), perhaps five percent above baseline, and then one percent. In a couple of years things should be back to normal, right?</p> ]]></content:encoded> </item> <item> <title> By: Cat </title> <link>https://junkscience.com/2014/04/bees-are-more-important-than-you-think/#comment-8317976315264140783</link> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Cat]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sun, 06 Apr 2014 03:35:30 +0000</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://junkscience.com/?p=54095#comment-8317976315264140783</guid> <description><![CDATA[Good article. Thank you.........]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Good article. Thank you………</p> ]]></content:encoded> </item> </channel> </rss>