Viva La Bees

1) honeybees do not produce “extra honey.” And beekeepers don’t take some of the honey, they take all of it.

Because I am!

Beekeepers make sure hives are fed before there is pollen in the air, protected from predators and the elements, and have enough honey to sustain themselves. We don’t take all of it.

But overproduction of honey leads to stagnation in the hive. It puts stress on the queen to lay eggs, and when they inevitably fill up all their space with honey (instead of filling up the multiple empty, clean boxes of frames beekeepers might put on top of the main hive box), the queen can get so stressed she dies. If there’s a spike in the weather and the hive hasn’t prepared new queen brood, that’s it! The colony is dead. Because there wasn’t enough space for eggs and honey in the hive.

Beekeepers take excess honey. We are constantly monitoring the state of the hive, checking for parasites, analyzing the eggs for diseases, and making sure they are fed and healthy (usually with sugar water and pollen substitutes until they have made enough honey to sustain themselves in the early spring months). If a queen dies prematurely, we make every attempt to replace her to save the colony.

I know there’s an urge to patronize everyone who works in the farming industry, but try to understand the differences between small scale agriculture and industrial farming. There IS a difference. And stop spreading misinformation.

If you’re this passionate about ethical consumption, look into some of the ecofeminist research on non-hierarchal interspecies relationships (working on building animal-human relationships in a non exploitative way).

Wasps also generally don’t hurt anyone unless they’re threatened, so no wasps don’t sting “for absolutely no reason”, they are animals, they don’t do things out of spite or because they want to cause pain. Some wasp species are extremely territorial just like some bees are also territorial and will literally chase you if you go near their hive.

And meet the neon cuckoo bee, a native Aussie bee. They are kleptoparasitic meaning they go into the nest of (my favourite) another native bee, the blue-banded bee and lay their eggs. When the eggs hatch they eat alive the original bees eggs and replace them, that’s why they’re named after cuckoo birds.  

Overall you need to acknowledge the above post which you just proved is correct, your assumption and demonisation of wasps is based on a few species and this weird cultural attitude of hating any animal that can defend itself. Animals are not out of get you, they don’t attack for no reason.

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Commercial beekeepers who send their hives to the almond farms are seeing their bees die in record numbers, and nothing they do seems to stop the decline.

A recent survey of commercial beekeepers showed that 50 billion bees – more than seven times the world’s human population – were wiped out in a few months during winter 2018-19. This is more than one-third of commercial US bee colonies, the highest number since the annual survey started in the mid-2000s.

A recent survey of commercial beekeepers showed that 50 billion bees – more than seven times the world’s human population – were wiped out in a few months during winter 2018-19. This is more than one-third of commercial US bee colonies, the highest number since the annual survey started in the mid-2000s.

Beekeepers attributed the high mortality rate to pesticide exposure, diseases from parasites and habitat loss. However, environmentalists and organic beekeepers maintain that the real culprit is something more systemic: America’s reliance on industrial agriculture methods, especially those used by the almond industry, which demands a large-scale mechanization of one of nature’s most delicate natural processes…

Like all bees, honeybees thrive in a biodiverse landscape. But California’s almond industry places them in a monoculture where growers expect the bees to be predictably productive year after year.

Commercial honeybees are considered livestock by the US Department of Agriculture because of the creature’s vital role in food production. But no other class of livestock comes close to the scorched-earth circumstances that commercial honeybees face. More bees die every year in the US than all other fish and animals raised for slaughter combined.

“The high mortality rate creates a sad business model for beekeepers,” says Nate Donley, a senior scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s like sending the bees to war. Many don’t come back.”

Just outside my kitchen window hangs a hummingbird feeder. While I fix my coffee in the morning, I enjoy watching them dart around it. I've even taken a few photos of them. Sure, there's usually a bee or two around, but nothing to deter them. However, on Friday afternoon, when I glanced out the window, I noticed that it was swarming with bees. I'm fascinated with bees, and I appreciate their contribution to this world. I was inside, and I'm not allergic. However, this made me jump for a second. Not enough to put my camera down and look away, though.