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Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

Honey bees are naturalized here. They are part of the ecosystem, for better or worse. Insect populations have adapted around them. Taking them away now would be a disruption, especially if it were not planned out.

For instance, if you were trying to reestablish some some native pollinator, reducing honey bee pressure might be part of that plan. Even possible a critical one. But just killing them and walking away? That probably won’t end well. It would be irresponsible to do so.

Even removing invasive species of plants involves a succession plan, so the same thing doesn’t happen again, or something worse moves into the vacuum. I know a couple people who could fill a whole workshop on what people often get wrong here (and I’ve encouraged one of them to do so, but no luck), but they would both agree that what gets done, flawed as it can be (especially in walking away too soon) is better than the status quo, or removal and neglect.

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> Insect populations have adapted around them.

Odds are, insect populations would also adapt to their disappearance.

Of course. But not necessarily in a way you'd like.

Purely from an economic and argicuktural perspective, is there a way for us to simply raise honey bees in more of a ‘bubble’ that is somehow protected from the giant wasps?

I’d imagine from what I’ve read that a significant chunk of bees are already artificially produced and distributed for crops.

That plus of course combined with a general ongoing attempt at eradication of the hornets. Or at least significant population control.

Or is agriculture simply too widespread and complicated (or ‘naturally’ dependent) for such a thing?

Hives are already a protective bubble, if the bees could make it more secure, they would.

We could make lasers driven by ML to identify the hornets and shoot them down as they approach a hive, but that would be really expensive :)

That's actually a very clever idea. I like that.

It would be an excellent grad CSS project. Identifying the Giant Wasps with 99.9% or whatever accuracy and deploying some defensive mechanism.

The problem like you said would be(e) infinitely expensive to deploy to all of the many thousands of randomly placed hives. But maybe useful for the industrial pollinator companies, which is a big thriving industry.

Anyway, I just like these sort of clever tech solutions.

There has to be plenty of solutions to this (major) problem we haven't thought of yet.

> if the bees could make it more secure, they would

I don't think the bees really have any input.

I'm not a beekeeper, and sure, the modern hives are also optimized for productivity and easy access(bees are forced to produce more honey than they would naturally produce) -- but hives entrances have certain dimensions taken from nature so the bees can cool the hive -- you cannot make the entrances smaller or the hive will overheat.

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