Honeybees aren’t native to North America [2]. The native pollinators, such as bumblebees, are outcompeted by honeybee hives [3]. Those honeybees then selectively pollinate certain plants, reducing biodiversity further [4].
Honeybees, however, unlike local pollinators, can be industrially distributed to industrial agriculture. So they get a lobby. Meanwhile, well-meaning folks put a honey beehive in their backyard and inadvertently wipe out the local bumblebee and butterfly populations.
[1] https://uwnps.org/event/6-26-25/
[2] https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/are-honey-bees-native-north-americ...
[3] https://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/em-9524-impact-bee...
[4] https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002...
The billionaire Resinick pomegranate/pistachoi/almond oligarchs put quite a bit of effort into native bees which seemed quite successful but they shut it down I think about 5 years ago. I can't find the article now. Gen X+ might remember them as owners of the 'Franklin Mint' hawkers of knickknacks you either are or soon will be throwing into a dumpster.
They are BTW also largest renters of honeybee hives in the US.
I have relatives that do or have raised bees (as a hobby). Can bees suffer? I don't know. I kind of think a bee can experience suffering in a small degree. I'm not going to run the experiments on that because I'm not a sociopath. Also arguably the hive is the basic unit of the honeybee organism, not the bee itself.
I do know for certain hogs can suffer. I'm a farm boy from Iowa. I've been around them from a young age and I hate everything about them. I hate the smell, I hate the way their meat tastes to me like they smell, I hate how if you are small enough and don't take care, they are mean enough to knock you down and eat you.
I'm probably one of the few people on HN who have actually experienced in person what a hog confinement facility looks and smells and sounds like. I wouldn't wish it on my worst hog enemy. It is a vision of hell, illegal to film in Iowa, and in no way comparable to how we treat bee hives.
I have no proof of this, this is just my theory, but the "portable" might be the issue. I think industrial beekeepers in the US might be part of the problem. Yes you can technically move the bees, but should you? You're moving around disease, you might be overworking and stressing the bees. Meanwhile you have farmers create massive fields with nothing but corn, grass, wheat, whatever, leaving you with essentially green deserts from the pollinators perspectives.
Again just a theory of mine, but the reliance of "portable" bees is what's causing the problem. Other countries have beehives for rent, but they aren't moved constantly. Often they stay in the same location all year and the bees are allowed to follow their natural cycles.
Trucking around hundreds of hives always seems rather stupid.
My only problem is the invasive plants which are determined to overwhelm everything.
I recently learned that a popular anti-mosquito trick by painters in my area is to put a fake dragonfly on their cap. Which led me to wonder where the actual buggers have gone.
I love this.
I'm reminded of how much we were taught that monocrops were bad things in grade school. And yet, you'd be hard pressed to name a popular food that isn't grown in giant monocrop fields.
Probably not, especially if they’re in an urban environment. The bees being shipped to farms, on the other hand, are ecologically destructive (as well as economically invaluable).
My takeaway is not that honeybees are evil. It’s that we need more pollinators in more stripes, and that the agricultural industry has successfully confused pollinators in general with honeybees in particular.
Similar to many, many other things.
It's VERY easy to create homes for these guys - if you've ever seen someone with a large log that has lots of little holes drilled in it, they were likely prepping a Mason Bee habitat. Ideally, they burrow into hollow, dry grass stems that broke off at some point in the fall.
I try to tell people about this bee because it's so easy to make homes for them. Just make sure to move the home every year, or it becomes too easy for predators to find them.
edit: also worth mentioning this bee is so docile, it usually only stings when it's squeezed or wet, and its sting is very light, and the hook is unbarbed. Better than honey bees in so many ways.
To use a silicon valley analogy, nobody has figured out how to scale out mason bees. Not to the > 200sq miles of pomegranates, pistachios, and almonds owned by the Resnicks. The Resnicks funded some in-house research and apparently considred it a failure.
It's probably possible. Might not even be hard once you know the trick, but it's certainly not a slam-dunk.
It looks like some folks use them for berries though: https://backyardbeekeeping.iamcountryside.com/plants-pollina...
We have some of those in our wild crazy yard. I gotta build me some homes for them because you're right they are so cute.
Looking into these guys, I find it pretty funny that one of the only "sightings" of this bug were a couple of specimens for sale on ebay.
You can start out simple, but you might need to be more involved if you want to prevent the spread of parasites since they are more easily spread when all the mason bee larvae are in one place.
[0] https://www.fountainofplants.com/post/clary-sage-salvia-scla...
Edit: yet another typo I give up!!
My current fav is the Fine Striped Sweat Bee, where the females are 100% turquoise. Dazzling! https://bsky.app/profile/pamelafox.bsky.social/post/3lv3eycl...
Our farms don’t work with bumblebees. Honeybees are fine. The problem is thinking we only need honeybees. We need more bees of all kinds. And in some cases, yes, that may mean fewer honeybees.
... in urban environments, and it' still debatable. Your #2 source provides additional details.
There are a lot of other dubious claims here that the sources seemed to contradict each other.
Something you didn't bring up is that people raising honeybee can benefit other pollinators due to changes in human behavior such as planting beneficial plants and refraining from pesticide use.
Do we have evidence backyard beekeeping promotes these behaviours better than directly messaging folks to plant pollinator-friendly gardens? (Genuine question.)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/how-bee-...
In all environments.
The source argues this competition is fine in urban environments because we’ve already displaced the native pollinators there.
Do you mean No. 3, the Oregon State University article?
No. 2, the USGS article, explicitly says "honey bees are also significant competitors of native bees and should not be introduced in conservation areas, parks, or areas where you want to foster the conservation of native plants and native bees."
(As for the Oregan State University article, the word rural never appears. It's focussed on urban areas, where honeybees have a smaller foraging radius and native bees are largely extinct. The carrying capacity argument only applies "during periods of abundant pollen and nectar.")
"Only half of the studies pointed to a negative impact of competition, and most of the negative impacts were studies where wild bees changed their visitation rate on certain flowers. It has yet to be demonstrated how competition may result in a long-term change in the composition of bee species in an environment."
You wouldn't find the term rural because they use the term wildlands.
The studies used in the Oregon article are not all urban focused and included studies investigating increased competition in varying habitat, finding "As the California study demonstrated, increased competition may cause bee species to switch their foraging patterns, resulting in little impact on their overall reproductive success."
And yes, any conservation area will not promote the inclusion of non-native species regardless of their impact. Just becuase they are competitors doesn't show that they have negative impacts.
I, unfortunately, developed a severe bee-sting allergy, and can no longer put these ideas into practice. I anticipate that commercial beekeeping cannot sustain its current practices.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18279124-the-rose-hive-m...
If existing practices are somehow radically worse, I would expect the first entity to adopt better practices to obtain a significant advantage - and the competition to copy them eventually.
I'm incredibly skeptical of any "everyone is doing X completely wrong and you should listen to ME and BUY MY BOOK instead".
- I can sell 100 units of product for $2. I feel good I am ethical and responsible.
- I can sell 300 units of product for $1. Everyone buys from me and I make more money, but I poison the land.
Capitalism does not account for externalities. Because businesses never have to pay the cost of poisoning water supplies or destroying ecosystems until he societal bell tolls - and because "if I don't, they will and I will go out of business" - unsustainable and unethical practices are the norm in late stage capitalism.
I mean, for real? Are you confused why mine operators encouraged taking more material at the expensive of structural integrity? Are you confused why gas barons don't like paying the cost to cap NG wells? Are you confused why big agri uses petrochemical fertilizers to grow subsidized ethanol and HFCS?
Isn't "vitality of bees" that this method claims to improve actually supposed to be desirable to beekeepers themselves?
The externalities are the introduction of non-native species en-masse to ecosystems that dominate the cultural niche and affect the entire balance of things.
It's the introduction of diseases and pests, which then prompted the use of antibiotics and pesticides. Then those waned in efficiency, creating even stronger pests and diseases. And that further amplifies the destruction to local ecosystem balance, where the native species lack even a defense for the base variants.
Beekeepers can't use native species, most of them don't make the economically viable hives. Those that minimize the damage they do or use sustainable practices will have reduced output for their forethought. This reduced output means higher prices, which means less customers. And their bees are still getting the diseases!
If they can survive or convince regulators, the long-run will benefit them. But, shocking no one, the bad actors now have all the money from the short-term gains and can now lobby governments or buy the small operations.
‘Late stage capitalism’ right now is way less ugly than ‘any stage USSR’, for any sane comparison.
Full capitalism and full communism are not the only options. Not sure why you even brought that up, as I never claimed communism is better? I said capitalism is flawed.
Capitalism is ‘capital makes the rules’, not ‘there are no rules’.
The reduction in windshield bug splats has more to do with the decline in insect populations.
EDIT: I originally said 75% decline over 30 years. Those are the results for studies in parts of Germany. We don't have solid data on global loss in insect populations.
That it helps with bugs is more of a happy coincidence.
I know you're not making a comment either way regarding pedestrian safety with sedans/SUVs in your post, but there's something that caught my attention about the graphic description for the sedan, with just a hint hanging there that the SUV would be worse.
Full disclosure: I'm biased against SUVs. Something about the sheer size seems wasteful. They also make more sense to be common in some places than others, and I haven't lived anywhere recently that I think they make sense.
Euro-NCAP crash standards are specifically designed to "help" this by means of hoods which crumple and/or shift position in such a case.
That is infinitely preferable to hitting the flat face of most American and Japanese SUVs and specially pickup trucks, which are designd primarily to look "aggressive" and "angry" because that's what pickup truck buyers want.
This is, for instance, a big part of why the Mini Cooper is no longer mini. They had to lift the hood profile to reduce angular momentum.
Also why the forward raked grill designs of the seventies are gone never to return. Those suck pedestrians under the car, which is almost always fatal.
https://www.cnrs.fr/en/press/agricultural-intensification-dr...
Animals do adapt behavior to avoid new threats. Now, admittedly it’s just conjecture but I would not rule it out nor am I saying it would account for all windshield spat decline.
Huge increase in lightning bugs this summer.
It’s more likely I think that most successful reproduction for the past century has increasingly been done by bugs who avoid flying over roads. There could be many reasons why they do this. Perhaps some sense the vast asphalt plain and prefer to stay in greener areas. Temperatures above roads in full sun are much hotter than above grass. Turbulence encountered by cars may encourage some bugs to seek calmer airspaces.
It’s not so simple as “pesticides”.
Let me guess, you live in rural America?
They've all seen the decline too.
Yes, I know there are some "studies" about this, but I find their sampling size and methods basically inconsequential.
[0] https://www.pan-europe.info/blog/acetamiprid-brain-toxic-neo...
Edit: typo
"You’d assume the lessening of antibiotics might be associated with improved health outcomes, especially since antibiotics are so overused."
It sounds more like something coming from Robert Kennedy, or one of those cranks who refuse to take antibiotics to treat strep throat, than from a mainstream researcher. Like, OF COURSE populations treated with antibiotics are going to do better in the period of a study like this. Under what plausible theory could you expect otherwise?
That's not to say that antiobiotics are an unmitigated good! I get that they have weird and complex downstream ramifications. It's just that those aren't the ramifications you'd expect to be able to measure from a study like this.
Drugs aren't just "take it and everything will be improved regardless of the situation". Better to think of them as carefully used poison, good but only when used wisely.
The 1950s vibe of sterilizing everything needs to be done.
That's the ugliest part of this whole thing. We aren't trying to keep animals safe, we are trying to keep the cost of hamburgers down even if it means people dying of incurable infections in hospitals.
Yes they are. Sub-theraputic doses are used to increase weight gain, higher doses are also used as a prophylactic.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2025...
While widespread antibiotic use is bad for bees it's nothing compared to what the viruses transmitted by the mites do to them.
What would be your best source to back that ?
(I'm not trolling - we've been having a vivid debates about that exact topic for the past few weeks in France, and one common counter-point is that the decrease in bee population is multifactorial, as opposed to having any "primary" culprit. So any source welcome :) )
There are some interesting things being done in the biome research. Even stuff like bacteria related to mosquito dunks.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01476...
> "Viruses and vectors tied to honey bee colony losses" (2025) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.28.656706v1....
> Abstract: [...] Notably, this decrease was inversely associated with rising overwintering mortality rates, suggesting that withdrawal of antibiotics in the absence of effective alternatives may negatively impact colony health. Furthermore, multivariate analysis accounting for environmental confounders (based on 119,244 data points collected from 234 unique locations across Canada) identified nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a common air pollutant from diesel exhaust, as a strong predictor of mortality. This finding warrants urgent attention given that NO2 can degrade floral odours, rendering them undetectable to honeybees during foraging flights.
more_corn•13h ago
deaddodo•13h ago
Nope, all a waste of time. We should’ve just asked “more_corn”.
morkalork•13h ago
bee_rider•12h ago
Are pesticides turning the bees depressed and non-virile? Woke pesticides are stealing your manliness?
meneton•12h ago
bawolff•11h ago
You say that like its purely due to AB gov's conservative bullshit. That may play a part, but it probably also has to do with how important canola is to ab economy (obviously still not a valid excuse, but maybe a better explanation)
9rx•10h ago
What suggests "conservative government bullshit"? The NDP held power in Alberta when these regulations were coming into force elsewhere. That is about as far away from conservatism as it gets in Canada.
"Of course" no doubt refers to the fact that Health Canada found the culprit to be dust-off from pneumatic planters. Whereas the crops in Alberta are almost exclusively seeded with drills, which are quite different in design to a planter and don't exhibit the same dusting characteristics. In other words, they never had the same problem Ontario and Quebec had. — Not to mention that Health Canada had already updated regulations to require technical changes to planters to minimize/eliminate dust-off, so for what little planter use might be found in Alberta, Health Canada was already on top of it, leaving little reason for the province to step in.
Calling it a ban in Ontario and Quebec is what is misleading. Farmers had to become licensed to use them, but they were never banned. It was mostly theatre.
zahlman•9h ago
I assume you have a source to demonstrate that people actually use and express this reasoning?
frollogaston•11h ago