[ExI] How Capitalism Saved the Bees?

[Dave Sill]

On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 11:30 AM, Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> http://reason.com/archives/2017/07/19/how-capitalism-saved-the-bees
>
> Crisis solved? Or crisis overstated? It's interesting that the article
> mentions there have been earlier episodes of CCD.
>

That's a pretty good article*. They didn't say there were earlier episodes
of CCD, just that there have been periodic causes of colony losses.

Yes, the problem has been overstated; fear sells. Remember the killer bee
scare? When CCD first appeared we didn't know whether we'd be able to
overcome it. It's been tough on beekeepers, who have never had it too easy
because the margins are thin and the challenges are numerous and constantly
changing.

-Dave

* one exception: "beekeepers can produce their own queens by feeding royal
jelly to larvae". No, beekeepers don't make queens by feeding royal jelly
to larvae. Workers make queens by constructing larger queen cells and
feeding those larvae *only* royal jelly. (All larvae get royal jelly at
first.) Beekeepers make queens by encouraging the workers to make queen
cells and moving them to unqueened hives before they hatch.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20170719/5602abf7/attachment.html>