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

(www.science.org)
186 points pseudolus | 3 comments | 01 Jul 25 10:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.594s | source
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GeekyBear ◴[01 Jul 25 15:05 UTC] No.44434645[source]▶
The standard practice for commercial crops is to bring in commercial hives of bees for pollination season that are shipped together via truck from crop to crop and region to region.

https://sweetharvestfoods.com/the-commercial-honey-bee-trave...

That sounds like a great opportunity to spread the resistant parasites from hive to hive and region to region.

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Spivak ◴[01 Jul 25 15:28 UTC] No.44434899[source]▶
Unless we change our farming practices there isn't much else you can do. You have acres and acres of land that are completely dead (as far as pollinators are concerned) for almost all of the year and then suddenly every plant blooms all at once and then goes away.
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GeekyBear ◴[01 Jul 25 15:41 UTC] No.44435029[source]▶
From what I've read, the hives that are seeing these severe die offs are the commercial hives that are being shipped around.

It is possible to have local beekeepers who don't ship their hives across the country, and there are still untended wild hives. Those seem to be in better shape.

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1. timr ◴[01 Jul 25 16:06 UTC] No.44435319[source]▶
Untended wild hives are probably also more genetically diverse, and therefore more robust to parasites and viruses.
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2. cameron_b ◴[02 Jul 25 12:48 UTC] No.44443112[source]▶
It is important to remember that the hives out in the woods are not wild but cast-off swarms of domesticated honey bees, and that the mating behavior of honey bees will fold in genetics from many hives in a region ( drone congregation areas represent feral and backyard and commercial hives in a rather vast area ).

The genetic research seems to point to the opposite happening - that because of pressures on honey bees from pesticides or pests ( and thereby viral pressure carried by various pests ) the feral and commercial populations track quite closely.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8991 - there's a lot here specifically relevant to this discussion but especially note the emergence of African Honey Bee genotype in wild populations. This paper is from 2015 analyzing the biodiversity response to the arrival of V. destructor ( varroa mites ) and Africanized bees were introduced in the early 1990s as well.

The take-away is that until you have a 3 mile separation of water, assume that populations of bees in a land area are more related than not and face similar pressures in a given climate, whether feral or managed. Honey Bees especially ( but of course every living thing ) should be managed with an ecosystem mindset.

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3. timr ◴[02 Jul 25 18:13 UTC] No.44447036[source]▶
A few things:

a) African honey bees aren't domesticated populations, challenging your overall point.

b) A 3 mile separation is not substantial (though I grant you that if most of the bees in any given cluster are introduced, then it might lead to more homogeneity).

c) even within "wild" populations of whatever, you see local clusters of genetic similarity. It's been a while since I took population genetics, but IIRC this kind of local equilibrium was well-covered.

Also, I haven't read the paper, but the abstract sure sounds like what I'm describing -- a sudden population bottleneck leads to rapid evolutionary adaptation in wild populations:

"These findings suggest that genetically diverse honey bee populations can recover from introduced diseases by evolving rapid tolerance, while maintaining much of the standing genetic variation."