[ExI] bees again

[Anders Sandberg]

Looking at the historical data, say
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/Historical_Data/index.asp
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/New_York/Historical_Data/Livestock/Livestock.htm
I am struck by 1) it is certainly declining, 2) the overall number of 
hives is not going down tremendously in California, but the decline in 
New York is far bigger. Not sure what this actually proves, but I think 
it shows there is an elasticity set by non-agricultural production that 
makes beekeepers to go into other businesses.

Generally, changes in habitat likely play a big role - I am struggling 
to find a report by Simon G. Potts about the UK situation I recently 
read, which argued that we have seen declines due to the vanishing of 
diverse meadowland, which is important for forage. There are many other 
possible reasons, but land use matters tremendously. In the US long term 
trends might be more complex:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/02/27/1218503110.abstract
Potts has a nice review paper: 
http://nature.berkeley.edu/kremenlab/Articles/Global%20pollinator%20declines.pdf

One insight: it might be stupid to depend too much on Apis mellifera. We 
should have a more robust pollination service. Wish I had a beetle for it.

On 06/03/2013 05:11, spike wrote:
> I previously left unstated my bride's attitude toward this whole 
> experiment of bees reviving and taking flight inside the abode: she 
> was not amused. That lass just doesn't love bees the way her old man does.

I think this is a common problem. There is a book about the beetle 
collection of the Nobel laureate Thomas Tranströmer, written by a fellow 
entemologist and author. It begins with a scene where they are sitting 
and boasting about the species they had in their boyhood collections, 
while "...in the kitchen, as wives of beetle collectors tend to do, our 
spouses were laughing at us."

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University