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186 points pseudolus | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.241s | source
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inetknght[dead post] ◴[] No.44434412[source]
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wyldberry ◴[] No.44434520[source]
Honeybees are not all bees, and are less important than wild/native ground bees[0]. By making this about trump, you are burying the lede here:

"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."

This is to be expected, eventually evolution will produce a small amount of a species that is resistant to a chemical, then those will likely be hyper successful at breeding. Honeybees are not native to the Americas, it seems like we've imported a major feast for these mites. Perhaps there's another organism that preys on these mites. Nature often provides the a cure with the poison.

[0] - https://choosenatives.org/articles/native-bees-need-buzz/

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lmeyerov[dead post] ◴[] No.44434718[source]
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1. wyldberry ◴[] No.44435523[source]
Again, burying the lede of the article which is about the last remaining pesticide that was effectively targeting the mite colonies. Six months of lost work is not the make or break for this, as this mite has been identified as a problem for at least a decade. This is a *treatment* of the mite problem, for which we have over a decade of research, proposed solutions, etc on.

That said: this mite problem is because of our industrial agricultural practices by bringing invasive species into the country to create a honey industry. The solutions to this are generally a combination of the below (at a high level):

1. Evolutionary arms race where scientists in academia and industry consistently try to find or invent new molecules that will harm nearly exclusively the mite, or perhaps genetically engineer a more resistant honeybee

2. Improve sterilization practices and protect existing swarms, and quickly identify mite infestations that could wipe the colony out.

3. Change of keeping practices to more accurately mimic nature, which is a challenge, because these bees are not native to the ecosystem, and native bees do not face these pressures because of a variety of reasons in the colony life-cycle.

This article is not about how impactful the "efficiency improvements" the government did by removing stability and the ability to plan long-term that occurred earlier this year. That was, at best, a drop in the bucket for this specific problem. You gotta stop looking at who is currently in charge when you're looking at a problem that initially was identified in 1987[0].

[0] - https://tsusinvasives.org/home/database/varroa-destructor