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.
This seems like it would be the obvious outcome? If bee keepers have been keeping bees healthy by giving them antibiotics, then stopping the antibiotics would lead to them being less healthy? Especially since the previous antibiotic use would have killed off the healthy bacteria.
Seems like they may not have realized that the fact that antibiotic use was associated with hive death could be because antibiotics are likely given primarily to unhealthy hives.
Modern beekeeping practices are a kind of factory-farming. Tim Rowe developed a method of beekeeping that takes advantage of evolution to improve the vitality of bees. It is described succinctly in his book, The Rose Hive Method. [1]
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.
I know I’m not the only one alarmed by the fact that we used to have to clean bug splats off our windshields weekly during the summer and now don’t. The downstream and parallel effects must be massive.
This one is weird to me because lots of people claim that they don't get as many windshield bug splats as they used to, and I haven't noticed a difference. I kind of wonder if there's some form of mass misremembering a la the "mandela effect where people have splatted (heh) one or two memorable instances of a bug-covered windshield across their entire childhood's memory range.
Yes, I know there are some "studies" about this, but I find their sampling size and methods basically inconsequential.
I wish the industry and governments spent an equal amount on battling the decline of wild bees. When they say "save the bees", it's not honeybees they mean. Honeybees are cattle.
Am I the only one who was surprised and kind of mystified by this sentence?
"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.
I always thought it was fascinating that Africanized honey bees ("killer bees") are the dominant honey bee in many regions of Central and South America for honey production.
This article seems like fantasy fiction: 'We thought antibiotics were to blame, but actually, it's NO2.' (next 5G?) while it's widely recognized for the last ten years that the primary culprit is neonicotinoids: very potent and pervasive chemicals that accumulate in the biotope, killing all insects indiscriminately, contrary to the misleading claims made by the agro-industry.
> it's widely recognized for the last ten years that the primary culprit is neonicotinoids
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 :) )
Bacterial issues aren't that much of a concern for beekeepers. It can be used to treat European Foulbrood, but the only other issue is American Fouldbrood and that isn't treatable.
There are some interesting things being done in the biome research. Even stuff like bacteria related to mosquito dunks.
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[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 46.9 ms ] threadHoneybees 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...
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...
Yes, I know there are some "studies" about this, but I find their sampling size and methods basically inconsequential.
"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.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2025...
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....