[mushroomba]

Modern beekeeping practices are a kind of factory-farming. Tim Rowe developed a method of beekeeping that takes advantage of evolution to improve the vitality of bees. It is described succinctly in his book, The Rose Hive Method. [1]

I, unfortunately, developed a severe bee-sting allergy, and can no longer put these ideas into practice. I anticipate that commercial beekeeping cannot sustain its current practices.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18279124-the-rose-hive-m...

[ct0]

a deck for those beek's that are interested https://projectloveforbees.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/...

[rdos]

I'm from shitty part of Europe and I never saw a beehive that looked different than those in the presentation. I looked up 'American beehive' and they look roughly the same. So isn't this already the used standard?

[mushroomba]

The Langstroth hive employs frame boxes of differing sizes. It makes a distinction between brood boxes and honey supers. This is a bit easier on the beekeeper. They can put a metal grate in the hive, and trap the queen in the brood chamber. Then, any frames built above the brood chamber are guaranteed to have only honey.

In the wild, bees build their nest somewhat like an onion, with the brood in the center, and the honey accessible on the outside rings. The Rose hive method allows the queen to lay the brood in a more natural way. The slide deck is a good summary but there is more in the book.

You would probably enjoy reading the history of the Langstroth hive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langstroth_hive#Hive_body_and_...

[Rendello]

Looking through this, beekeeping is a strange and interesting world that I know so little about. Cool!

[highstep]

After one season of bee keeping I concluded the same thing. Its horrifying how poorly bees are treated in this industry to control parasites (forced exposure to acidic gas) I sold my hives and will probably never buy honey again, much in the same way I avoid factory farmed meat.

[ACCount36]

As always: if those ideas are so good, why aren't they used?

If existing practices are somehow radically worse, I would expect the first entity to adopt better practices to obtain a significant advantage - and the competition to copy them eventually.

I'm incredibly skeptical of any "everyone is doing X completely wrong and you should listen to ME and BUY MY BOOK instead".

[Tadpole9181]

I have no idea how you could actually be confused about this.

- I can sell 100 units of product for $2. I feel good I am ethical and responsible.

- I can sell 300 units of product for $1. Everyone buys from me and I make more money, but I poison the land.

Capitalism does not account for externalities. Because businesses never have to pay the cost of poisoning water supplies or destroying ecosystems until he societal bell tolls - and because "if I don't, they will and I will go out of business" - unsustainable and unethical practices are the norm in late stage capitalism.

I mean, for real? Are you confused why mine operators encouraged taking more material at the expensive of structural integrity? Are you confused why gas barons don't like paying the cost to cap NG wells? Are you confused why big agri uses petrochemical fertilizers to grow subsidized ethanol and HFCS?

[skeezyboy]

> unsustainable and unethical practices are the norm in late stage capitalism. thats just people. the economic system is about money, "ethics" are a social thing. you can have a utopia with or without capitalism.

[rightbyte]

Well you need some kind of incentive to not put "ethical" business out of business due to a race to the bottom.

[skeezyboy]

yeah, essentially death or chastisement, capital punishment or arrest. its all weve ever had, and ever will have.

[lazide]

Capitalism will happily bake in externalities if anyone makes them.

‘Late stage capitalism’ right now is way less ugly than ‘any stage USSR’, for any sane comparison.

[Tadpole9181]

Regulations are not capitalist, definitionally free markets do not account for externalities. Only when an externality has such an effect that it affects market behavior, but then it stops being an externality. Again, definitionaly.

Full capitalism and full communism are not the only options. Not sure why you even brought that up, as I never claimed communism is better? I said capitalism is flawed.

[lazide]

lol. I think you’re thinking Anarchism, not Capitalism.

Capitalism is ‘capital makes the rules’, not ‘there are no rules’.

[globular-toast]

The problem is you are talking about orthogonal concepts, ie. economic policy and social policy. See the Political Compass: https://www.politicalcompass.org/

[ACCount36]

Where's the externality here?

Isn't "vitality of bees" that this method claims to improve actually supposed to be desirable to beekeepers themselves?

[Tadpole9181]

Modern, mass-scale beekeeping isn't about the vitality of bees, it's about getting the most honey out now.

The externalities are the introduction of non-native species en-masse to ecosystems that dominate the cultural niche and affect the entire balance of things.

It's the introduction of diseases and pests, which then prompted the use of antibiotics and pesticides. Then those waned in efficiency, creating even stronger pests and diseases. And that further amplifies the destruction to local ecosystem balance, where the native species lack even a defense for the base variants.

Beekeepers can't use native species, most of them don't make the economically viable hives. Those that minimize the damage they do or use sustainable practices will have reduced output for their forethought. This reduced output means higher prices, which means less customers. And their bees are still getting the diseases!

If they can survive or convince regulators, the long-run will benefit them. But, shocking no one, the bad actors now have all the money from the short-term gains and can now lobby governments or buy the small operations.