Probably the same reason we had 40+ tornadoes, huge hailstorms, floods, and drought-enabled wildfires in six adjacent states within 48 hours. Anthropogenic climate change is real, whether you believe in it or not.
The upside is now farmers won’t have to worry about what to do with the crop surplus from trade wars, dismantled USAID, and defunded school lunch program.
Dont forget that time the hurricane hit Tennessee and it fucking flooded the mountains
Everything is totally normal
Well, one would expect mountainous areas to flood because elevation focuses water flow. I’m in Florida, flattest state in the union. We never flood except in hurricanes, and those floods don’t last like they do in other places, in and out.
Still… I expect hurricanes in Florida, not in Tennessee.
Hurricanes are known to travel in land and up North though. The fact a hurricane hit Tennessee isn’t odd. It was the strength and the length it lingered over the state that made it devastating.
It’s always the lingering part. What was that one that fucked Houston not long ago? Sat on top of them forever. Hurricane Ivan was like that down here. Only a CAT-3 at landfall, but I listened to that freight train sound for over 10 fucking hours.
Anthropogenic climate change is real, whether you believe in it or not.
You know who believes in climate change? Fossil fuel companies, insurance companies, the military industrial complex, and every single politician talking about buying or taking Greenland by force. All the very same people who have spent the past half century publicly denying the existence of anthropogenic climate change. Not only do they believe in it, but they are designing their profit models around it at our expense.
deleted by creator
Please stop saying sacreligious comments like this. It’s offensive to religious people.
Have you tried persecuting all the scientists yet??
I know it’s likely pesticides, but have we officially ruled out bee assassins?
You mean wasps? They have been pretty quiet lately…
Ah cmon now, stop spreading conspiracy theories. They probably just couldn’t prove citizenship and were deported.
Isn’t pesticides just bee assassination on a mass scale? Thus, I argue, we cannot not yet rule that out.
Idk, I heard that trans people and immigrants are murdering bees.
I was worried so I looked for the source of the information, it seems to be from 'Washington State University" from their website they say it concerns “Commercial honey bee colony”, so it might not be all bees (I don’t know enough to say what the difference is exactly), they say “60 to 70% losses” (not 80), and they also say “Over the past decade, annual losses have typically ranged between 40 and 50%.”, so it is probably worrying but not as much as the CBS article was making it seem.
so worry but not panicking yet. gotcha, nothing will be done then.
Part of the panicking should be wild bees. They’re dying at accelerated rates.
We also know why, commercial bee keeping is part of it, as is hobbies bee keeping.
And pesticides… and monoculture farming.
I don’t know whether you were satiric or not, but it feels like it, hard to tell on a text medium. No hard feelings either way 😄
If you were “mocking my post in a satiric way”: I didn’t mean to say that nothing should be done or that it was not a reason to worry. I actually believe we should protect our ecosystems, but I think we need accurate data and this kind of posts, even if they convey the “right” message according to me, are misleading and create false information about what is going on. I truly believe we should try to avoid doing this.
This story is about domesticated honeybees, which have been declining for decades due to Colony Collapse Disorder and other stressors. Native North American bees are in their own long-term decline, with 1 in 4 species at risk of extinction. However, domesticated honeybees are tremendously important for the pollination and yield of many crops important to humans, and this population drop, thought to be the largest annual losses seen, should be considered in the context of the longer decline, and the possibility that we could hit a tipping point when pollination, and a crucial pillar of our food system, could fail.
That’s $15 billion worth of crops.
They just can’t break out of that frame, even when the topic is EVERY LIVING THING FUCKING STARVING TO DEATH.
But also
“there are now an all-time high number of honeybee colonies in the US – 3.8m, around 1m more than five years previously.”
According to the guardian
We could always eat the rich.
The inherent problem with that is how few there are. Don’t get me wrong–yes, let’s do that, too.
It’s a good starting point. I have a feeling a lot of other solutions will become possible after that step.
They’re hoarding all the wealth and are a rich source of vitamins and minerals
Best comment lmao
The people need their ads (or whatever the reasoning is), show some compassion, in a few decades they’ll only be seeing the same Nuka Cola ad everywhere.
I have a decently locked down browser and adblocker. The real page loads faster for me, takes no archive resources, and other have pointed out other benefits of preserving the canonical link as well.
Also, bees usually survive cold winters, which could be a thought for last few months.
Honey bees are dying but you can help native bees in your area. Find out what they like and plant that shit. Also just letting weeds grow helps a lot of species.
I get leafcutter bees at my place as well as a few other solitary species
Making bee hotels for solitary bees is child’s play. Take a chunk of wood, drill holes, hang in a tree.
Technical aspects:
- Don’t use pressure treated lumber, anything else is fine.
- Look up “solitary bee hotel” for your area to see what size holes to make for the locals. In any case, it’s going to be a variety of different sizes to cover all your bases. Doesn’t have to bee (heh) perfect.
- Make the holes, especially the edges, nice and smooth. They’re not dumb enough to nest their if the hole is raggedy and might jack up their wings.
That’s mostly it. You can research easily enough in an hour or less There’s a woman on YouTube that sells bee hotels and has solid advice for making your own. Wish I remembered her name. Anyone?
Damned satisfying when you find the holes plugged with wax! You have new tenants! Stupid easy and basically free.
CAVEAT: These things are single use. Chunk 'em out every season, or better, burn them. Keeps the mites out. Make another for free.
I can’t do that! What about my nice green grass lawn? /s
Weeds? I thought they were pests
Weeds aren’t really a thing. A weed is just a plant we don’t like.
weeds are to gardens like my house is to HOAs.
G
As long as you mow them it’s all good. Just having a yard with anything than just a monoculture grass is better.
The running thought is these non-native European honeybees couldn’t find forage at the right times due to climate change and these massive commercial hives died of malnutrition. That’s why introduced species and monoculture agriculture don’t work out so well.
Okay, but European honeybees in the US aren’t exactly new afaik. That would be like if all of the sudden, 80% of wild horses up and die and the answer is “well, they’re an introduced species, so it only makes sense”.
Imma go out on a limb here and blame late stage Capitalism and some sort of pesticide or whatever that could solve the problem if it costed 5 cents more but the solution is to save that money and let the bees die.
Imma take my chances on that.
there’s a crazy scene in the documentary More Than Honey where they compare beekeepers with US Almond Farm pollenators. It’s all about money and it’s sickening.
Idk about others, but mine died due to temperatures not reaching above 27 for 14 days straight.
Bees live less than two months, so if only 80% of bees died in the last 8 months that would suggest a sharp recent population increase. And even if you take it as read that it means bees dying and not being replaced, 8 months is still a terrible timeframe to use because it’s literally saying “there are 80% fewer bees now, at the tail end of winter, than there were at the height of bee season”.
I’m not saying there isn’t a bee crisis, just that this factoid is very badly worded.
Without looking at data it could also mean “beginning 8 months ago we noticed a downwards trend of bees compared to the prior year(s) that culminates to an 80% decline at the time of writing.”
deleted by creator
The longer I live the more I see modern civilization collapse inevitable and happening in the relatively near future.
How the fuck do you even prepare for something like that?
deleted by creator
U don’t. U just watch it collapse. If u cannot control something, don’t worry too much. That’s my take. Enjoy everyday.
deleted by creator
No idea.
LETS KEEP PUMPING CAPITALISM UP
NEW IPHONE WITH AI LETS GOOOOO
Sorry for getting all excited, it’s just we don’t have much time.
Want to help? Plant pollinator gardens. Easy peasy. Even some pots of local wildflowers on your patio. It all helps.
It does, but the problem everyone’s talking about isn’t about wild bees, it’s about farming bees. Monospeecies of non-native bees pollinating monoculture of probably corn. They are dying, but only because they’re basically kept in bees analogue of factory farming conditions.
Wild pollinators are fine (well, as fine as any wild species can be in our world, so not really, but at least not worse than others)
Bees have been under assault for a while.
It’s hive mites. The Varroa mite is going to wipe out all bees from the planet. And there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.
Source: talked to a beekeeper.
there’s a fungus that protects against the mites and it’s being researched. it’s genius, the bee picks up the fungus in a contraption where it has to crawl through to get to nectar and then brings it back to the hive. i read it in Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life.
Is now a bad time to get into mead making?
I wonder if I can return my yeast…
I’m not a bee, you’re not a bee, so it sounds like a them problem.
(On the internet, nobody knows you’re a bee.)
You can say whatever you want about them in text. As long as you don’t dance it, they’ll be none the wiser.