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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Your periodic reminders that:

1. Honey bees in North America are a non-native invasive species.

2. Virtually all honey bees in the United States are livestock.

3. Colony collapse disorder is an economic issue for commercial beekeepers, and apparently not much of a problem.

4. The true threat to honey bees in the United States isn't environment, but rather the introduction of the Varroa destructor mite in 1987 (which eradicated feral honey bees).

A "honey bee sanctuary" in the continental US is a weird idea.

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About number 3, according to wikipedia [1]

> the total U.S. crop value that was wholly dependent on honey bee pollination was estimated to exceed $15 billion.

and

> honeybees perform some level of pollination of nearly 75% of all plant species directly used for human food worldwide.

Which sounds like a bit more than just beekeeping.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder#Econo...

Honey bees in the US are economically important despite not being a natural part of our ecosystem. But they're no more threatened in that role than CAFO pigs are. At its peak, "colony collapse" was (apparently; there are experts on HN who can break this out with precision) associated with low double digit overwintering losses, no meaningful increase in the price of new queens, and normal fluctuations in the price of pollination services.

It's also worth remembering that if your concern over bees is environmental and not economic, honey bees compete with native bees and also transmit pathogens to them. They're not entirely benign.

Is there some real figure which would give truth to the amount other insects would pollinate, if not honey bees? It seems like we have way too many insects in the world for the honey bee to be the only reliable pollinator.

Besides, aren't solitary bees supposed to be better pollinators?

As much as I like honey, I can't help but thinking there is a huge gap in logic with all of these people waving and screaming we aren't going to have food because of dwindling honey bee populations.

Realistically, the only plants which rely on honeybee pollination are from eastern europe, since that's where honeybees lived before the indo-european expansion.

So any plant that's say native to the new world (corn, beans, squash, tomatoes) must not rely on honeybees for pollination.

This is not to say that there's not a bee problem: non-honey bees suffer from habitat loss (and a lack of investment keeping them around).

The honeybee origin is African rainforests, there are a few of other honeybees species native from Asian rainforests also.

Some families of plants native of Europe use bees, other not. Is more about plant phylogeny than about geography. Similar species of flowers in other areas are quickly adopted by bees when available.

Solitary bees are specialized in small flowers like clover, and are territorial and well, solitary. In their niche are unbeatable, but can't compete with a healthy beehive if we talk about apples, pears, peaches, plums or cherries.

Mason bees are used to pollinate apple orchards.

Obviously, worth noting that the trees you're listing --- with the possible exception of plums --- are also non-native. Which doesn't make them bad, but does make this an industrial agriculture problem, not an environmental one. And industrial agriculture seems to have the honey bee maintenance problem basically under control.

Mason Japanese bees (Osmia cornifrons) are used to pollinate apple orchards. Non native.

Osmia lignaria is US native and used to pollinate almonds and orchards, but is not so common.

There are other mason bees native from USA like Osmia ribifloris but they pollinate manzanitas (a relative to Rhododendron), not manzanas (apples). They can pollinate blueberries also (that are in the same family as Manzanitas and share similarly shaped flowers).

That's helpful additional detail. I'm not anti-honey-bee! I just think this is an animal husbandry challenge (one commercial pollinators appear to have handled) and not an environmental crisis --- unlike, say, water.

> honeybees perform some level of pollination of nearly 75% of all plant species directly used for human food worldwide.

Bees pollinate 75% of species, but not 75% of calories. The major cereals (wheat, corn, rice) are all self or wind pollinating, as are number of other staples (e.g. potatoes, peas).

Thank you for pointing that out. I wouldn't have included it if I had realised the distinction.

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