[update]

> Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Oregon

Are the eight states from the title. Though it seems New York should be included since it says "The bumblebee species have declined by 99 percent in New York."

Also noteworthy

> In the Midwest and Southeast, population numbers have dropped by more than 50 percent.

To nobodies surprise, the culprit is pesticides. Interestingly the west's bumblee population isn't listed as being in trouble.

[cratermoon]

> the west's bumblee population isn't listed as being in trouble

What do you call Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Oregon?

[speedybird]

North Dakota is generally considered the mid-west, no? I suppose mid-west is a sort of west, but I tend to think "the west" starts when the Rocky Mountains start; about half-way through Montana.

[cratermoon]

So New Mexico is not part of the West?

There's a definition based on climate that's used widely https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/04/11/the-100th-merid...

[throw0101a]

> > North Dakota is generally considered the mid-west, no? […]

> So New Mexico is not part of the West?

Mid-west ≠ West:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_United_States

[bagacrap]

by this definition still 3 of the 4 states listed are in the West

[cratermoon]

One common definition is west of the 100th meridian, or about halfway through North Dakota. Montana is firmly in the west, as are the other 3 states mentioned, plus Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and Washington.

[desert_boi]

Do you have a source pointing at that common definition? I lived a majority of my life in the West US (ID, MT, WA), and have never heard North Dakota referred to as the West.

Maybe it's a Canadian thing? -100W is the border of Manitoba and Alberta?

[msrenee]

I've heard it used for bird ecology for sure. The 100th meridian is the general cutoff between eastern bird species and western bird species. I think it holds true in other areas of biology.

I've driven back and forth across it a lot. Obviously it's a gradient and not some magic barrier the great-tailed grackles cannot cross. And we do get western kingbirds a couple hundred miles east as well as western meadowlarks. It's still a handy boundary so that you know more or less what to expect in a given area ecologically.

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/04/11/the-100th-merid...

https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2018-04-12-100t...

[rascul]

https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/maps-data/maps/reference/us...

[JeremyTerps]

North Dakotan, can confirm, never heard that.

[JeremyTerps]

Lifelong North Dakotan, never heard of or thought of ND being a western state.

[cratermoon]

Where in N. Dakota? I can see that being so for east of Missouri River to the border with Minnesota, but towards the border with Montana the state is decidedly Western in culture and climate.

[bombcar]

“The West” means “California” to many.

[whartung]

Well, at one point, "West" meant Ohio.

[seanmcdirmid]

Also Illinois. Why else would northwestern university be in Chicago and not Seattle?

[ISL]

Well, that's incorrect :).

[update]

i actually was just thinking of the west cost. i'm a los angeles native, guess that shows. sorry.

[5faulker]

This is another example of "progress trap" that we didn't see coming until it's too late to act.

[metagame]

We've known what we're doing to all types of bees for a long time. Here's a paper from 01999 talking about pesticides and their toxicity to bees:

https://ucanr.edu/sites/uccemerced/files/40411.pdf

There are many articles that have found viral audiences throughout the 02000s about how other bee species are on extinction spirals because of the American agriculture industry's lack of regulation. This happening to the bumblebee is not a real surprise and we've definitely seen it coming within the window to act.

[data_ders]

Very interested in your year notation. This is the first I’ve seen of it before. Is this to inspire readers to take a more long-term view?

[bqmjjx0kac]

An unintended consequence is that it confuses C programmers, who expect an octal literal to follow the leading 0.

[mbil]

Yes, The Long Now Foundation[0] uses the same notation. [0] https://longnow.org/

[bombcar]

I will start the Long Long Now Foundation and support years with fifteen leading zeros. Much better.

[shagie]

That's already part of a proposed "standard" - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2550

[adolph]

So long now uses strings instead of integers for year? That seems shortsighted.

[metagame]

I just saw an e-fluencer use it, so I decided I might as well also. No hidden agenda here.

But yes, that's the intention behind the action here: https://blog.longnow.org/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-dig...

[msrenee]

So 10,000 years ago is approximately the start of the agricultural revolution. So the start of cities and I believe I can get away with saying the beginning of modern civilization. So 8000 years in the future is when they expect to encounter these issues with 4-digit dates. 8000 years in the past, no one had invented the alphabet. Someone double check me, but I believe that's before proto-Indo-European is believed to have developed. So the language that became the languages that became the languages that we speak today in Europe and various parts of the world isn't believed to have become distinct from its own progenitor yet.

It just seems kind of cocky to think that we can forsee what sorts of problems are going to need to be solved in the year 10k. At least as far as technology is concerned. I can see arguing for a long-term outlook on social issues. Of course we need to be looking well down the road on environmental issues. But technology? They really think that we're going to have a problem with the number of digits in the date in the year 10k? It wasn't even really a problem in 2000.

Thinking about the future is important. I have the feeling they're not literally worried about the number of digits in the date. I'm pretty sure it's just supposed to get you thinking. But nothing they're doing makes logical sense. Yes we should be thinking about the future, but trying to shoehorn it into our modern framework is misguided in my opinion. The idea itself isn't bad, but I'm not sure they actually understand how to use it constructively.

I haven't read much about this group in 10 years. If someone has more recent experience with the concepts, please let me know where I'm wrong here. I honestly want this to be a useful group, but nothing I've seen them do actually helps accomplish anything useful.

[carapace]

I'm not the person you're asking, but FWIW I first heard of it in connection with the Long Now Foundation

> The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years.

https://longnow.org/about/

[dragonwriter]

An aside, but Y100K-limited fixed-length years are dumb. They don’t fix a Y10K problem, because untruncated variable-length years don’t have a Y10K problem. The Y2K problem was caused by truncated 2-digit years with an assumed two-digit prefix, and the problems when the assumed prefix became an incorrect assumption.

Its true that software that only reserves four digits for years becomes a problem in Y10K, but fixing that internal representation problem shouldn't have any effect on presentation, and if it does “5 digits fixed” presentation is a soft indication of the most short-sighted possible solution.

[bamboozled]

Why do you pad years with an added 0? Looks weird.

[metagame]

Y10K compliance, of course.

[bamboozled]

Why would HN comments need to be Y10K compliant? What about catering for people reading your comments in the year 199999?

[metagame]

I think that, given current estimates on lifespans and advances in nanotechnology, it's plausible that I'll be around when Y10K happens, and being able to search through my collected writings in a simple, uniform way will be nice. I'm lazy, and would be unlikely to write a script to convert the dates automatically.

I think it is significantly less likely that I'll be around when Y100K hits. I don't particularly care about anything that happens after my death. That's somebody else's problem.

[Kaibeezy]

Makes me want to party like it’s 9999.

[taeric]

Per Wikipedia, the American bumblebee doesn't live in the west. Such that the Midwest states listed are as far west as it goes.

Or am I reading the page wrong?

[Tagbert]

There are other bumble bee species in “the west”. that seems likely to be true in other areas.

In the Seattle area there are: yellow bumble bee tricolored bumble bee yellow-faced bumble Western Bumble Bee Franklin's bumble bee Rusty patched bumble bee

I have seen reports that at least some of these species ranges are greatly reduced.

[taeric]

Right. I didn't mean to imply there are no bees here. My question/point was more on it most folks were getting distracted by other species.

I've also heard most bees are effectively invasive, at this point. And now they we have murder hornets... I really don't know what to think we far as actionable things.

Not that I'm arguing for giving up. Or rampant insecticide.

[olah_1]

I read somewhere that we used to use nicotine-based pesticides in the past and the bee issue happened when we switched away from that.

I guess China still uses nicotine-based pesticides?

[ambientenv]

Neonicotinoids - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid

[bitcurious]

> To nobodies surprise, the culprit is pesticides. Interestingly the west's bumblee population isn't listed as being in trouble.

To my surprise. There is very little farm land in New Hampshire. For the East Coast, it’s very wild.

[StanislavPetrov]

Anecdotally I live in New York and have seen plenty of bumblebees this year.

[msrenee]

There are a lot of species people call bumblebees. This one particular species, Bombus pensylvanicus, has disappeared from much of its range. You may be seeing insects that are called bumblebees, but not likely the species being talked about in the article. If you do have the knowledge and experience to be certain that you are seeing lots of Bombus pensylvanicus in particular, get in contact with your nearest Fish and Wildlife Service office. That's a big deal.

[gerdesj]

Quite. Also its way more complicated than that. I'm not an apiarist per se but I am interested in them - an interested amateur if you like.

To me there are roughly three classes of bee: There are honey bees, which are the ones that are farmed by humans ie domesticated. They live in colonies of around 50,000 in mostly man made hives. There are wild bees that naturally form colonies. Bumblebees for example, live in colonies of around 20 to 2000 individuals. Finally we have the solitary bees. These do not form colonies at all.

What is happening is that various species of really useful insects are being wiped out. This isn't just in the US but everywhere.

This is perhaps the situation in the UK: https://post.parliament.uk/research-briefings/post-pn-0619/ feel free to grab the report and read it. It's not pretty reading.

[pc86]

Is this type of comment helpfully, generally? Ancedotes are typically ignores because they don't show the full picture. If we have verifiable evidence of a staggering decline in population of a given species, "yeah well I've seen plenty of 'em!" doesn't seem particularly useful - to the larger discussion, toward any sort of objective "truth," or really... anything.

[t-3]

Anecdotes can be useful in aggregate, where they can validate or give reason to question a claim. There is a lot of sloppy science and reporting on environmental subjects like these - look at the stuff about feral cats being a danger to songbirds estimating annual predation levels higher than the regional songbird population.

[msrenee]

Can I get a link to the feral cat info you're talking about? My Google skills are weak.

[C19is20]

As much for the full picture, i come to hn for the anecdotes. So yes, 'useful', to me.

And, just to be super-clear, i come for the comments, and rarely the articles.

[msrenee]

So even though you have no way of knowing if the species of bee this person is seeing is the same one in the article, you find the information valuable?

[pfdietz]

Probably Bombus impatiens. I see them all over my property in the Finger Lakes.

[devb]

There are at least 17 species of bumblebees in New York.

[JoeAltmaier]

Iowa, haven't seen one in years.