[schainks]

Honeybees are not native to North America.

It is great and currently necessary we use them the way we do. It makes one wonder in the age of AI and evolving farm practices, can we start finding ways to cultivate already-climate-adapted native bees to do the work? Can we leverage adaptations for specific crops?

I get it that honeybees work great at pollinating monoculture fields, etc., but that does not change the fact we are perpetuating a square peg in round hole problem and pushing it very very far right now, at greater and greater cost, all while climate change is fighting us.

[looping__lui]

I suppose honey bees are not native in North America pretty much the same way as the human species?

I don’t quite understand why there seems to be a pretty persistent thread around “honey bees are invasive and harm the ecosystem by stealing all the food from the native bees and doing all their pollination; that’s why they decline” - when at the same time the use of pesticides is so rampant that insects are literally gone entirely.

Honey bees are not great and reliable pollinators btw.

So the solution is: more genetically modified crops? More pesticides?

Unless “we need to stop our use of pesticides and we should also acknowledge that honey bees are an invasive species and consider making changes to the way we do monocultures” are in the same sentence this entire “honey bees are invasive” argument just feels super weird. Pesticides kill native pollinators. It’s not the honey bees.

Edit: and just to be clear - honey bees do not survive in the wild by themselves anymore due to varroa mites. They essentially depend on humans to protect them. That’s what the entire purpose of this article is about. So, if humans stopped keeping honey bees - they’d have a pretty hard time surviving in the wild on their own.

[dqv]

> I suppose honey bees are not native in North America pretty much the same way as the human species?

No? Well not in a way that wouldn't be stretching an owl over a globe. But Carolina Jessamine is toxic to honeybees and not natives (or at least there exist native bees who have adapted to not slurp on it if it is toxic to them). That doesn't stop people from spreading the lie that Carolina Jessamine "hurts bees". It hurts some species of bees. To transfer this concept to the human population, you'd have to start arguing that there are different species of humans or, again, construct a stretching-an-owl-over-a-globe argument.

And people can't mention every caveat in every discussion, sorry. You've really just constructed a strawman.

In a 40-minute discussion with someone like Doug Tallamy, both the issue of invasive honeybees and pesticides will come up. The venn diagram of people who care about both things is very close to a circle.

Also, as to your edit - that honeybees rely on humans doesn't change their impact on native bee populations, which is they outcompete native bees.

There's nothing weird about correcting the popular ignorant assumption that the only pollinator that matters is honeybees.

[eleveriven]

I think the problem is that these things can both be true. Pesticides can be a much bigger threat to native insects, while dense managed honeybee populations can still put extra pressure on native bees in some places

[mastermage]

An idea that sprang to mind and please point me out at which points its unrealistic and why because I am talking completely out of my ass here. If we want to reduce mono culture but we still need to somehow figure out how to provide humanity. Could large scale vertical farms, in Green Houses reduce the footprint of monocultures? By being more productive year round? Or is that just technolgist delusions of mine?

[j4k0bfr]

The thing that always baffles me with vertical farming is sunlight. Assuming most crops are pretty good at turning full spectrum sunlight into useful stuff, why shrink your solar energy per crop?

And assuming you get around this via grow lights, surely the energy and material cost goes up too much for high-volume crops to make economical sense.

[ssl-3]

I think it's hard to generalize whether vertical farms are good or bad; efficient or inefficient. It seems that whether it works or not relies very heavily on the locality.

In my part of Ohio, we have lots of farmland -- and plenty of water that just falls out of the sky. We've got reasonably-long, generally-hot days during our growing season and we get some serious crop production done here while it lasts.

The rest of the year? The days are short. It's dark and cold outside; frozen, even. We can't grow crops outside here in the winter.

But vertical farms (eg, fancy greenhouses) can just keep going. With artificial light and/or supplemental heat, they're still producing even in the depths of winter.

Thus, I can go to the grocery store near my house and buy a locally-grown tomato in February. It's expensive to get this done, but the alternatives include paying someone to drive it up here from thousands of miles away or just going without a tomato until after things have warmed up again and stayed that way for awhile.

[devsda]

Just thinking like if something doesn't grow in winter, is it because of lack of plant's adaptation or is it because their primary vector for seed dispersal hasn't adapted to survive in that weather or may be because it is not safe to consume in that season.

Or simply put, can wild animals eat tomatoes safely(on evolutionary timescale) in winter if they don't normally grow in winter.

[ssl-3]

I'd like to choose Option C:

The tomato is native to places like Peru and Ecuador, and eventually was moved to [what is now known as] Mexico as we kept bringing it further north.

The tomato is Ohio's state fruit[1], but it does not belong in Ohio. The only reason we have tomatoes growing in Ohio is humans; nature has nothing to do with it. They wouldn't be here without people dilly-whacking with things.

(And I'm glad they did so. Tomatoes are delicious.)

[1]: Seems weird but it be that way anyhow. Ohio also has a native state fruit, which is the paw paw.

[b112]

This only makes sense in certain circumstances I think. For example, shipping tomatoes from 5000km away when it's winter in Canada.

I recently did some research, and there are multiple local greenhouses around many large Canadian cities for just this reason. They are competitive in the winter, and sell to local supermarkets. The cost of the greenhouses vs shipping + loss.

And there is a loss in nutrition, when you harvest green and it takes weeks to hit the table, vs something picked yesterday and picked when actually ripe.

Of course, these are large warehouses, not typical greenouses.

So I guess the answer is, it can make sense in certain circumstances. A warmer place where you can grow fruit outside year round, not so much.

[anjel]

Canadian hydroelectric is the catalyst that makes winter hothouse produce cost competitive. Wealthy us elec producers have no incentive to match Canada's low cost of production. Indeed their incentives are rather contrary.

[lebuffon]

In southern Ontario where there are many ( the most?) greenhouses electricity is primarily produced by Nuclear (50..55%) Hydro power is about 24 ..38% of the total.

I think the bigger difference is the Canadian attitude about the "commons" nature of electricity and so profiting excessively on power is frowned upon.

[badc0ffee]

Most of the tomatoes and cucumbers I buy here in Alberta year-round are greenhouse grown in-province. Our electric power here is basically natural gas with a bit of wind and hydro. Although to your point, we're probably one of the cheapest locales in the world for NG.

[forlorn_mammoth]

I appreciate you being upfront about the depth of your knowledge.

Regenerative farming and/or permaculture offer ways to run industrial-scale agriculture without the monoculture. See i.e. https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal...

Another innovation I see is the use of "crop tunnels" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytunnel) to greatly extend the growing season in colder climates (another poster mentioned "Ohio"), and/or better control evaporation.

[bell-cot]

Over the years, many firms have poured many $millions into vertical farms.

If you're growing extreme-value crops - marijuana, or maybe exotic salad greens for Michelin-starred restaurants - that can actually work.

Otherwise, you're trying to compete with millions of square miles of naturally sun-lit dirt, and extremely efficient modern agro-tech stacks. Bankruptcy awaits.

> just technologist delusions of mine?

I'd bet you've read several articles about techno-utopians setting up vertical farms, and their grand dreams. Which always hand-wave the "how can this massively expensive setup complete with dirt?" part.

Farming sun-lit dirt does not magically require monoculture, nor poor farming practices. The problems is monoculture's appeal to certain human cultures - especially profit-maximizing "big ag" capitalists - and the agricultural policies enacted by naive politicians.

[m4x]

> you're trying to compete with millions of square miles of naturally sun-lit dirt

You're begging the question with this statement. Indoor growing is used when you don't have access to this kind of resource. There are many locations where access to land or suitable conditions is restricted.

CEA has been used profitably for a long time, and the most valuable crops are mushrooms and leafy greens, not exotic or illegal plants.

[bell-cot]

> ... when you don't have access to ...

These days, "don't have access" is a micro-market. Everywhere else, indoor growing has to compete with the cost & delay of importing. Last I heard, even Antarctic bases are only growing a few fresh veggies - 99% of their food is imported. (Well, plant-based food. They might do a fair bit of fishing.)

> CEA has been used ...

My comment was replying to magemaster's "large scale vertical farms ... just technologist delusions".* Vs. greenhouses - which can be little more than plastic sheeting over light wooden framing over sunlit dirt - yes, those have far saner economics. Mushrooms - which can be grown in dark caves without dirt using prehistoric technology - are also a very different thing.

*To quote Wikipedia - "The modern concept of vertical farming was proposed in 1999 by Dickson Despommier, professor of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University.[2] Despommier and his students came up with a design of a skyscraper farm that could feed 50,000 people."

[looping__lui]

I’m just saying: stop hating bees with made up arguments

[anjel]

Robotic polinators ftw.

[fhdkweig]

Better than having to do it with human hands. They had to do that when the bees died in Biosphere 2.

[ghssds]

I saw that Black Mirror episode.

[bregma]

The catch is that native North American pollinators are adapted to native North American flowers and have a great deal of difficulty pollinating introduced species that are native to Eurasia. Given the vast majority of commercial crops are not native plant species, the only way to mass pollinate them is to use non-native pollinators.

Also, few native North American bee species are eusocial. That's another quality one would need to be able to use them the same way as commercial honeybees are used today.

The there is the issue of honey production.

[dqv]

That's not true. We have a lot of generalist bees (and other pollinators too! bees aren't the only ones that pollinate!) that can pollinate the Eurasian crops. This is also true for any other crop on any other continent. And I am dubious as to your claim about major crops. Soybeans, for example, are self-pollinating, so it would seem any generalist bee can pollinate soybean crops for better yields.

This is an issue of biodiversity. If we rely on a mono-species for pollination and that mono-species goes extinct or its population plummets, then our crop yields are down 20% until we can build up other bee populations.

This is about giving back to Nature so that She may continue to cradle us. And She does tend to punish us for "optimizing" toward one specific species.

We do enough already taking crops from one part of the world and putting them elsewhere. In exchange for that, we really ought to be trying to support the native wildlife as much as possible. The Europeans can have their honey, and I will have my maple syrup. On occasion, of course, so as not to upset Nature.

[gadders]

>>Honeybees are not native to North America.

Neither are horses.

I guess the issue is you don't get honey with the native bees.

[colechristensen]

A quite similar horse species went extinct in North America ~10,000 years ago likely due to humans.

The horse ancestor species come from the Americas and migrated to Eurasia over the bearing land bridge.

Horses were only missing from North America for 10,000 of the last 50 million years.

[firen777]

I was about to say the same: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse#Equus

Of all the examples to pick from, seeing GP picked horse made me wonder if GP was doing it for gits and shiggles.

[MostlyStable]

I've always had a soft spot for the plan of repopulating the Great Plains with modern versions of all the extinct megafauna. We used to have camels and cheetahs and lions and more. We could import half of the African large mammals and they would have had near species analogs in the relatively recent past, geologically speaking.

[nerbert]

Neither with horses

[gadders]

Good point. We need to genetically modify horses that can pollinate plants and create honey.

[galangalalgol]

GMO hyper competitive feral cat colonies that ignore birds and pollinate gmo soybeans whilst collecting for their kitten hives. Each claw is of course a stinger. What could go wrong.

[bregma]

"Ohh, soo cute! Here little kitty! OMG... RUN!!!"

[codesnik]

yay, horse vomit.

[lebuffon]

There were native horses, in fact the genus began in N. America and migrated out. Remains have been found in permafrost in Northern Canada. They went extinct about 12,700 years ago, sometime after humans arrived.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

You could pick up a catalog from any of these places and find half a dozen different species of bees to cultivate for pollination. Blue mason bees come to mind. Anything that's even slightly domesticatable is being pursued. Some of these bees are loners too, perfect for the hipster crowd.

[EA-3167]

This is also a submarine story and has been for well over a decade.

https://www.bpia.org/2014/11/spider-venom-snowdrops-shield-b...

And yes it's a "square peg round hole" problem, but the issue is that the solutions don't exist yet without driving up the price of everything we eat.

[grayhatter]

Did you just ask if we could use AI to create new/better honey bees?

[xgulfie]

Grok, pollinate the flowers

[eleveriven]

The hard part is probably that "native bees" are not a drop-in replacement for managed hives you can put on a truck and move between farms

[halflife]

If they are not native, how did plant propagate seeds? Flies? Wasps? Butterflies?

[Jedd]

Amusingly, propagate has a horticultural, and non-horticultural meaning, and it's not obvious which one you're using there, because the bee's role is long over by the time the seed is ready to go out into the world.

Pollen can be carried (as noted by sibling and you) by lots of different insects, and there's myriad solitary and other (by conventional standards) weird bee species around, plus lots of plants are happy to pollinate themselves (tomato is a good example) or rely on wind (corn/maize is the famous example there).

When the common honeybee landed in the continental USA, about four centuries ago, the same people also brought in lots of (other) european plant species that had co-existed with Apis mellifera for millennia.

[halflife]

Thanks for the detailed comment! I always heard that bees pollinate the vast majority of plants, so in the parent comment, I assumed incorrectly that the meaning was for bees in general being non native.

[Jedd]

Yeah, there's a claim I've seen about 'every third mouthful of food' that humans eat needs honeybees, and that may well be true.

I'm in Australia, and we only got Varroa in 2022, and it was suppressed for about a year before a regrettable 'oh well' attitude overwhelmed us. The last couple of years has seen a breathtaking impact.

Anecdata - one of my five hives is still struggling on.

Australia's experience since 2022 had (I thought) laid to rest a lot of the 'It's not varroa that's the problem' claims from armchair analysts.

But yes, per my earlier point, lots of our tree crops require honeybees to be shipped in - just because of broadacre / monoculture style farming. Well, along with honey production being its own industry - so they need to follow the nectar, and change up the flavours a bit, but also some trees just don't produce useful amounts of nectar but absolutely require a lot of pollinators for a few weeks only (almonds / peaches I think fit this category).

[EdwardDiego]

Native bees. Apis mellifera are introduced bees across most of the world.

But yes, there are other pollinators like butterflies, moths, flies, birds, etc.

[halflife]

Makes sense, thanks!

[tim-tday]

There are hundreds of native bees. It’s the European honey bee that is not native. The native bees tend to be solitary or non honey producing small colony bees that hibernate instead of stocking honey for the winter. We tend to only care about honey producing bees for obvious reasons.