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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

CCD is an economic problem. The varroa mite wiped out feral North American honey bees --- which are not native to North America --- a long time ago. Supposedly, any honey bee you've seen in the wild for the past decade has been part of a proprietary hive.

So, ordering more honey bee queens off the Internet seems to be a pretty reasonable response to the problem of a 10-20% increase in overwintering hive failures.

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What would a non-native honey bee in the wild look like? I live in California and the bees in my garden and in the local parks are various. Some look like bumblebees and some look like just bees but I don't know bees from bees.

Here's a good starting point:

http://www.pollinator.org/PDFs/MontanaBeeGuide-Final.pdf

It would look like a honeybee https://www.google.com/search?q=honey+bee&safe=off&espv=2&bi...

A lot of what you're seeing are probably wasps (the yellow jacket being one variety).

> What would a non-native honey bee in the wild look like?

It would look like a honey bee. None of them are native. Native bees are orchard mason bees.

tptacek has a very efficient guide to bees posted. Another nice national one that is very comprehensive is the USDA's guide at http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb530646... . Scroll to page 17 or so to start looking at illustrations of particular bees if you don't want to read about their habits. But the best for CA is the Berkeley Bee Lab's page on native bees at http://www.helpabee.org/common-bee-groups-of-ca.html

There was a great art & education & science installation on native bees at the UC Botanical Garden in Berkeley a few years back (http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Shirley-Watts-Mo...). I know they still have a beehive, and they might have some exhibits on native bees.

The Berkeley site is neat, but it's got a picture of the european honey bee right at the top and no mention of it being non-native.

I might be missing something, but surely that's not a sustainable solution?

If honey bees in the wild are an invasive species decimated by another invasive species, and pollinating honey bees in practice are all proprietary, than discussions of honey bee populations in the US aren't much different from discussions of dairy cow populations.

So, no, I don't see how this is unsustainable.

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