Honeybees Are Overrated

[aggienaut]

   Don't get me wrong, you know I like bees, but I'm also a huge fan of being realistic about things. I just finished about a month of working the beekeeper's association booth at the local fair, and have some venting to do about the things people say. I address most of the dumb questions in this other post, but I'd like to address two issues more in depth.


I. "Albert Einstein said if the bees disappeared all humans would be gone within four years"

   Is a quote I've seen bandied around a number of times and a pretty fair number of people coming through the booth liked to recite it for me. However, consider:

(A) Honeybees aren't native to the Americas
(B) Humans lived in the Americas just fine prior to the introduction of what they called "white man's flies" by European colonists

   So how would a genius like Einstein get this wrong? Well the answer is quite simple really: he didn't. He didn't say it.

   The quote doesn't appear anywhere until 1994 (39 years after his death), where its used in a pamphlet protesting tariffs alleged to harm French beekeepers.


II. Honeybee Pollination is Responsible for 1 Out of Every 3 Bites You Eat

Is often noted anywhere people are trying to talk up bees and beekeeping, including on some of our club stuff at the fair I think. My main objection is just that putting it that way makes it sound like some odd sort of food russian roulette, where no matter what you're eating, every third bite was touched by a bee.

   Also, I'm not sure who did the math on that one, but I'm told that none of the world's top 12 most consumed crops ("bananas, wheat, rice, potatoes etc") are pollinated by bees. (But most fruits are, and meat counts via the pollination required for alfalfa for livestock feed, so it depends on your diet really)


III. Honeybees are just so special!

   Or some such. Don't get me wrong they ARE important because while life won't stop without them, nothing else extant is as effective at mass pollination of fields. BUT in terms of inherent value other than that, they're not more special to me than say bumblebees or wasps or butterflies or .. possums. But people come into the bee booth acting like honeybees deserve some special sacred appreciation just because.. they're useful to us?
   Someone was going on the other day about all the harmful things humans have done to the honeybee's environment, to which I pointed out "you know what the most environmentally destructive thing we've probably done involving honeybees is? Introduce them to America ... which pushes all the native pollinators out of their niche and messes up the ecosystem."


   In conclusion, it's not that I've become actually anti honey bee or anything, I still think they're fascinating, I just would prefer people keep everything in perspective.


(special thanks to klig and whatisbiscuits for the mythbusting help (: )


***Edit: dammit this was supposed to be posted to emosnail. Hence the reason it partially rehashes the last entry here. d: Sorry about that

Comments

[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

No, they are a distinct species.

However, they are domesticated and they do produce honey.

It is really cool, also, the way they are domesticated. The wild ones live in hollow tree limbs, and these are carefully harvested without disturbing the bees, and fitted with clay or stone end pieces, and hung over the fireplace in someone's house.

I am not sure how they do it, but the brood is in the middle of the log and the honey towards the ends, so they periodically remove the ends and harvest the honey. Since the bees don't sting, they are kept as household pets.

Their reproduction is completely different (from this interesting article:

Unlike true honey bees ... the caste system in meliponines is variable, and commonly based simply on the amount of pollen consumed; larger amounts of pollen yield queens....

There is also a genetic component however, and as much as 25% (typically 5-14%) of the female brood may be queens. Queen cells in the former case can be distinguished from others by their larger size, as they are stocked with more pollen, but in the latter case the cells are identical to worker cells, and scattered among the worker brood. When the new queens emerge, they typically leave to mate, and most die. New nests are not established via swarms, but by a procession of workers who gradually construct a new nest at a secondary location. The nest is then joined by a newly-mated queen, at which point many workers take up permanent residence and help the new queen raise her own workers. If a ruling queen is herself weak or dying, then a new queen can replace her.



.

Stingless Bees

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's really interesting. Thanks for the links btw. The way they establish new colonies is really interesting. Too bad they don't live around here, it would be fun to have a colony of them.

Re: Stingless Bees

[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

Attempts have been made to introduce them to other parts of the World than Mayapan, but so far with no success. I agree that it would be way fun to have some.

The idea of the bees inside the house is just so cozy, somehow.




.