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Scientists identify culprit behind biggest-ever U.S. honey bee die-off

(www.science.org)
186 points pseudolus | 4 comments | 01 Jul 25 10:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.93s | source
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westurner ◴[01 Jul 25 14:54 UTC] No.44434497[source]▶
How to plant a pollinator garden?

How to counter parasitic mites? Aren't there new LLM applications for chemicals discovery?

> According to a preprint posted to the bioRxiv server this month, nearly all the dead colonies tested positive for bee viruses spread by parasitic mites. Alarmingly, every single one of the mites the researchers screened was resistant to amitraz, the only viable mite-specific pesticide — or miticide — of its kind left in humans’ arsenal

"Viruses and vectors tied to honey bee colony losses" (2025) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.28.656706v1....

replies(2): >>44434641 #>>44434984 #
1. franktankbank ◴[01 Jul 25 15:36 UTC] No.44434984[source]▶
Native pollinators don't give a shit about mites. Don't spray herbicide and nature will do the rest.
replies(1): >>44435841 #
2. westurner ◴[01 Jul 25 16:54 UTC] No.44435841[source]▶
What in nature eats the mites that are killing the bees?
replies(1): >>44436811 #
3. franktankbank ◴[01 Jul 25 18:33 UTC] No.44436811[source]▶
Nothing needs to eat them, they just need to be manageable for the bee pops. The way that native colonies work, it just doesn't matter. The colonies size is essentially never greater than a few and often don't form colonies at all, so mites don't have really any good transmission vector.
replies(1): >>44449327 #
4. westurner ◴[02 Jul 25 22:04 UTC] No.44449327{3}[source]▶
Have you read the article?

Do you believe that ecology will just resolve bee colony collapse due to mites?

From the article:

> USDA research points to viruses spread by pesticide-resistant mites, indicating a worrying trend

If nothing eats or kills the mites that are killing the bees, should we expect bee colony collapse to resolve on its own?