This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
"Scientists synthesize nutrients Bees no longer get because humans destroyed all the flowers, and we think this is a net good."
Spouse and I work every year to add native plants and flowers back around our host to give the bees a place to go. Anything to save these amazing, little polinaters.
Humans: oh sure, let's not change our insane agricultural system that is the major killer of biodiversity but instead create yet another technonfix by now in 2026™ fiddeling with the genes of another species.
When will we finally learn: there are no technological solutions to 'manage' the living. The living is not 'manageable'./We've tried this approach pretty much since 100 years and every one 'solution' created two new problems. Look where we are guys, our planet is FUCKED. 50 years ago it was DDT, now it's Crispr-CAS9...
1000 likes for this celebration of technical human dominance, we're doing quite right, do we? Not our 'dysfunctional' ecosystem is the problem, but our approach to it that is based on control and (technoligical) dominance, instead of humility and respect.
Get rid of the large swaths of green fucking grass, which completely useless when one cuts it down. Let the Dandy Lions grow like we do in Europe and plant more native flowers too.
Let the Dandy Lions grow like we do in Europe
No, Dandy Lions crowd out native North American species and result in less diverse ecosystems, which is bad.
I have a native meadow lawn and it's awesome. Zero maintenance, barely any watering (just peak dry season) and incredibly beautiful. The ecosystem takes care of itself as long as you don't buff one side by accident.
Clover. Clover is great:
+1 for clover. I "accidentally" spilled some clover seed outside our place (bugger off HOA), and it's slowly overtaking the grass they planted.
If and when I ever get a home first thing I'm doing is planting clover.
My yard was infested with bur clover, horrible stuff when you have pets. Worse when your pets are poodle mixes.
Other clover yeah they chill.
I spread a bunch of clover seed around my yard, and where the grass was struggling (I don’t water or fertilize at all) the clover took over, and where the grass was doing ok naturally the clover sort of let the grass have that space mostly. Now the whole yard looks nice, and the clover is just fucking loaded with bees all day. It’s great. My dog just lies in the lush clover and watches the bees buzz around.
It's also way less ugly than dandelions that have finished blooming and started spreading seeds, as a bonus. In fact, it looks pleasing to the eye.
IIRC it also grows really easily, you can guerilla plant clover seeds around town at night if you really want to.
Question from a yank: Is it 'dandy lion' or 'dents-de-leon'?
He wrote it wrong. Its dandelion, and its pronounced in English just like you do, but dependent on the country, we have different words for it. In danish its “mælkebøtte”. Which means “milk bucket”. I think because of the white liquid they have inside. Its good for mosquito bites.
So they're feeding bees Vegemite now.
Several bee factions see this as a vaccine and are opting out. /s
Bee Joe Rogan is going hard on ivermectin
Bee do our own rezzearch
hivemind at work.
This method is surprisingly effective at bringing back our god damn honey. We may not have to kill Nicolas Cage after all.
Soo, beekeepers thought for generations that bees (a animal too) only need sugar to live?
Beekeepers dont harvest the Pollen which the yeast is replacing. The lack of Pollen is most likelly a result of Monocultur.
No, but they do replace the honey with sugar syrup
Only during specific times of the year, it's a supplement not a main diet. If you notice your colony doesn't have enough honey for the winter, or it's a new colony, or needs medicated, then yes. Otherwise they should be eating their own stored honey made the way they like it.
Why can't they just be easy to exploit gosh darn it
And so the house of cards grows by another level. We'll just modify this to add this missing thing. Never mind why it is missing. 10 years later we are 9 layers deep on plugging holes we've created that technological advancements got us out if until they don't and whoosh the cards come crashing down. The hardiness of nature replaced by the frivolity of man.
Couldn't agree more
I really wouldn't call nature "hardy" when an entire ecosystem can collapse when you can take one single species out of it
Let's remember that nature is what produced pandas
Though I still agree
What ecosystem collapses when removing a single creature? Are you talking about pre-holoscene extinction ecosystems? Or are you talking about modern ecosystems (after most of the original biodiversity has already been obliterated, and "removing one species" is actually thousands down on the list of removals)?
Fair enough. It was meant yo contrast with man's obviously fragile solutioning on the fly.
Nature is extremely resilient and adaptable. Life has survived entire mass extinctions and come back flourishing
Sure, nature writ large is resilient and adaptable.
Individual species die off all the time. Sometimes for stupid reasons.
I understand the sentiment and don't generally disagree... But in most places around the world, Western honeybees (apis mellifera) are an introduced, agricultural livestock, like cattle, and don't really belong in the natural ecosystem. This is akin to farmers providing grain feed to their cows; they don't have to exclusively rely on pasture grass which didn't evolve to withstand hundreds of hungry herbivores mowing them to the ground every day. Also, honeybees are mediocre pollinators for most native plants. If native bees don't have to compete for resources with honeybees, that's a good thing for both the native bees and the plants that coevolved with them.
Here in Germany farmers are payed for a strip of each field to be planted with wild flowers instead. They don't lose money at all and nature keeps a bit of land. Simple and cheap.
I guess healthier hives would be less prone to winter die-off. Wonder what they feed the yeast on?
Bees
That's the tradeoff, it's bees /s
That is awesome news BUT
The real reason is humanity being a bunch of irresponsible greedy fuckwads, and I fear that this will be used not in the "let's be less greedy, let's fix the problems and let's use this to help the bees" but more as a "woohoo, bee factory farming!" and "W00T, this means we can fuck over bees even more, let's go!"
Can we please stop it with the greed?
Exact same thing I thought. Honey bees are actively harmful for the environment because they outcompete wild bees who are less efficient at pollination whilst being actively exploited for their honey. While improving their diet is certainly a net benefit for the bees, at the end of the day it just reads to me like farmers have more efficient workers to harvest more honey and exploit even more.
The solution is so simple. Crop/pollen diversity. Instead of letting fields lay fallow for crop rotation, they could plant diverse wildflower meadows to improve quality of bee health for the traveling bees that get shipped around for crop rotation. Or the bee keepers themselves that sell the services of their bees, could ensure diverse flower and pollen options when their bees aren't traveling.
