A couple of notes on the article, that I disagree with, backing it up by "appeal to authority" through my decades as a beek.
> These man-made hives have very different thermal properties compared with their natural habitat of thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows.
Bees, including Apis mellifera will build hives anywhere where there is sufficient cover, space, and ventilation, not just "thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows".
> On cold days in these thin-walled hives, colonies form dense disks of bees, called a cluster, between the honeycombs.
The presumption is that the human made hives are less thermally protective because they are "thin-walled". This is just patently incorrect. There are many, many hive designs and many are made out of wood, but many are made out of plastics or even styrofoam. Their thermal protection can be significantly higher than 150mm wood (later noted in the article
substantially insulating, such as 30mm of polystyrene".)
Bees do not form a dense "disks of bees". They form a ball, and rotate in and out with the queen around the center, just like the referenced penguins.
I could not identify the type of hives that were evaluated. From the picture, it appears to be a tiny apiary with Langstroth design, all with three full/deep/brood boxes. From the pictures in the paper, they evaluated eight hives.
I am willing to learn, but this single article provides insufficient details how the data was collected and in what context was done.
Most non-initiates think that beekeepers somehow control bee colonies like cows or chicken. Not so much. If a colony decides they want to leave, there is almost nothing you can do about it; they will leave. If they figure they did not like the winter, they will move. A hive will be just fine in a felled log, a hollow tree, or human made space for years without any interaction. It is more of a symbiotic relationship than a stewardship.
>this single article provides insufficient details how the data was collected
Ah see that's the trick, they didn't collect any data. This is a modeling exercise [1] by the author, with any real values they need cherry-picked from other papers. And having reached a conclusion with their model that doesn't agree with reality (that clustering reduces bees' temperature), they've decide the problem must be with reality.
My kingdom for a couple thermocouples stuck in a bee ball!
This is interesting, but what is the application? The debate about insulating or not has been going on for a long time. Anecdotal experience has been that losses have been similar for people who insulate vs not insulating, and those losses vary from year to year. Of course there are numerous other reasons for colony loss, but if this was a significant factor, I would assume we'd see a noticeable effect.
Humans prefer fake treatments that cause pain, because you "know they're working".
This cold storage is a significant added cost and used only in hot areas . It minimizes varroa since the mites can only breed in hives with brood. It's done in spring when otherwise the bees might swarm. Failing to insulate hives in cold areas will require more feeding to maintain colony size over winter, and that would be financially dumb.
The writer seems like an expert, but makes weird assumptions. Commercial beekeepers are very different (and care much more about costs and output) than hobbyists. Some hobbyists are no doubt incompetent (but caring), and some commercial operations are completely uncaring (but rarely incompetent).
You don't have to feed them pollen if they don't have brood, but they still try to keep themselves above the 50F storage temp so they need honey/syrup. If they were outside pollinating at spring temps (in a warm area), they wouldn't need any feeding at all.
It's a cost add in the warm climes so the only reason I can see to do it is for mite treatment.
Sometimes it seems that this kind of philosophical narratives are anchored in XVII century science. Everything with pain receptors feels pain. Period. Animals evolved this structures exclusively to feeling pain. Because this is a very positive trait if you want to survive.
Insects and other invertebrates are known to have pain receptors since the XX century (Yes, clams feel pain, and roundworms feel pain also). This is not new ground breaking science at all. What is new is using this to move forward the agenda of the cruelty animal crew.
I'm not against building better beehives, but we should focus, --laser focus--, our attention and most of all our scarce resources investing into much more urgent problems with insect species losing of habitat, being poisoned and facing extinction.
Because money is scarce on conservation and much more scarce on invertebrate conservation; and "give me money or this bee will die frozen two days before to just die of old age and be replaced by other bee" is a ridiculous problem.
Unfortunately, insects can feel pain actually is a new concept. I don't know why, but there are people hope to replacing pig with insect, because "insects can't feel pain".
Even if we don't view ourselves as humans in the most favorable light, even if consider the possibility that our tendencies might be more egotistical and destructive than we realize.
In such a scenario, deliberately causing stress generation after generation in a species crucial to our well-being and, perhaps, survival is not advisable. It raises the question: What could go wrong?
It would be good to have evidence of that, though? Your takeaway is, at best, an assertion of the article/study. One that is really only based on thermal properties of the hive. Not on comparing survival rates. Or, really, any measure of agitation or other measure that we would use to measure distress?
Agreed. Beekeepers have gathered a lot of experience. Is some of it based on incorrect understanding of science? Sure. Would they have noticed if insulation was a deciding factor in loss of colonies? Absolutely.
I will say that this article together with one from earlier this year [1] put into question the benefit of cold storage.
We would use thick Styrofoam insulation (2-3) inches thick and would insulate the entire hive with it. In the winter we would feed them occasionally with warm honey/sugar. The Hives were also protected by a row of thick Evergreens as a wind break. Maybe lost one or two hives over a decade. If your not wrapping them and preparing them for winter than you shouldn't have bees.
There seem to be a lot of hobbies or activities like beekeeping where people seriously neglect the animals' needs yet seem quite oblivious to it. I've noticed in aquaria that people often seem to think fish or shrimp will be fine in absolutely dire conditions such as low oxygen, chemically unstable, cold, hot, or otherwise hostile environments. They're genuinely confused when the system collapses. Certainly some species are very resilient, but it's no surprise that people lose entire hives or aquariums like this. Caring for nature requires real care, attention, and diligence.
As in aquaria, if you want something you can "set and forget", you need to let nature take over and provide a) a biome resembling a natural habitat and b) place the appropriate species and scape inside it. Then you can get away with no mechanical filtration, no heater, no air, etc. You can safely go on vacation because the system will clean itself, generate food, and so on. But that requires considerable knowledge and care at the outset and the willingness to let things be. In the case of beekeeping, this almost seems like you'd need to allow a hive to be inside of a log or stump or something where the bees are properly protected and secure. Barring that, you need to be cognizant of their needs and actually take care of them.
I'm not sure why people get the idea that animals should survive in conditions so wildly different from their natural conditions, and why they continue to try to make it work.
>There seem to be a lot of hobbies or activities like beekeeping where people seriously neglect the animals' needs yet seem quite oblivious to it.
Reptiles are notorious for this as well. I am an avid fan of snakes, and it's depressing to see how often they are kept very poorly. So little humidity that they have multiple layers of stuck eyecaps - potentially losing their vision. Serious infections from bites from live-feeding. Tiny cramped enclosures with nowhere for the snake to hide. Poor heat management that either leaves it freezing or with serious burns. Overfeeding to the point of obesity. Buying wild-caught animals. Buying snakes with severe genetic problems.
It's very frustrating. Some owners are responsive to advice and will quickly do what they can to improve their care - but some are stubborn and won't accept any at all.
> I'm not sure why people get the idea that animals should survive in conditions so wildly different from their natural conditions, and why they continue to try to make it work.
You're aware of what animal we are, yes? Our natural habitat is the savanna. We're grassland, running monkeys. We've spread across the entire globe and put our own kind into situations we'd never ask an animal to excel.
It's practically in our own nature to try to defy nature itself, in a stroke of irony.
You're correct, for the record. People get into things they have no clue about and then animals suffer for it. But this stood out to me because we even expect ourselves to make it outside of good conditions.
Ha, this is such a great point. We're innately good at doing what most other species can't do. It makes sense we'd forget that they can't, you know, live in conditions that should kill them. For us? We'll bring a blanket or make a fire. For them? Misery and possible death.
It's not unreasonable to think people might just forget how much we actually do to adapt that other animals simply can't.
> There seem to be a lot of hobbies or activities like beekeeping where people seriously neglect the animals' needs yet seem quite oblivious to it.
I’m sorry but what?? On what basis are you making this remark? Do you really think the generations of people who have researched and kept bees are all doing so neglectfully? Look - you may not like the way bees are transported for the almond harvest (which could be a reasonable argument), but that’s not what your comment indicated. Instead you painted our entire field - which is quite broad in itself - with a massive brush as though we are all neglectful by default. So as a beekeeper, I would challenge that your statement above is seriously out of line, especially as the rest of your argument is about an entirely separate field with no examples given from beekeeper - commercial or otherwise.
I’m speaking of hobbyists, primarily. I’m not painting an entire field, either. I’m saying there is a subset of people who participate who don’t take it seriously enough or recognize the gravity of their role as caretaker of these creatures.
If this was the default, beekeeping couldn’t really exist.
I’ve known a few people to keep hives and have them collapse over what likely amounts to negligence. It’s not evil negligence so much as the result of wanting it to be easier and less hands on than it is. The reason I don’t have hives (despite years of wanting to explore the practice) is that I recognize there are challenges I’m not equipped to face and special knowledge to care for the bees properly that I don’t yet have. I’ll hold off until I’ve got the right time, space, preparedness, and other factors sorted out.
Some people charge into it and kill a ton of bees, over and over, not seeming to realize how crucial their role as a caretaker is. This is true of many roles as caretakers of animals. Even people with dogs sometimes fail miserably, expecting amazing results with totally inadequate inputs.
My point isn’t that there’s anything wrong with beekeeping. Or aquaria for that matter. I love keeping fish. My point is that many people get into these things and cause a ton of suffering and seem oblivious to or inconvenienced by proper caretaking practices.
> If your not wrapping them and preparing them for winter than you shouldn't have bees.
There is an entire philosophy of beekeeping supported by a variety of studies conducted on remote islands around the UK that we should be positioning bees for minimal interference like you suggest (as well as interference via mite treatments, etc) in order to allow for evolutionary adaptations to create more robust bee populations.
Modern Scandinavian beehives are normally made from Styropor, and about 30 - 40mm thick. The bees will still cluster. I do think you're on to something though, because losing only two hives over a decade is pretty impressive, regardless of your number of hives. A common issue is that the bee will cluster and move "the wrong way" in the hive, away from available food, and the get stuck in a corner and starve. It seems like the level of isolation you provide might be enough that the bees are more free to move around.
One way to combat that, according to our old bee keeping advisor, is to have at least two boxes and stack them so that the frames are 90 degrees to each other (one box compared to the next), with food in both boxes. This way the bees seem to not get stuck in a corner as often.
I never heard that, but that sounds reasonable. In Denmark it's generally considered less than ideal to have more than one box during the winter, unless you use Seeberger or other lower profile boxes.
Our advisor always used two boxes, normal height, and it seemed to work for him. We have been using two with reasonable success for a few years. But the sample is small.
We lost a few of hives but not to cold. My father loved taking care of the bees. He would purposefully set aside a few hectors/acres near the hives to plant Buckwheat, Alfalfa, etc so they wouldn't have to work so hard or fly to far. They loved him back and treated him with kindness, he rarely got stung and would sit among them in his shorts and undershirt smoking his cigarettes relaxing. It was where he could just go and get away from everyone knowing no one would bother him there :)). Me on the other hand was a different story...hehehe
> If your not wrapping them and preparing them for winter than you shouldn't have bees.
This is such a bold statement given the variety of climates in which bees are kept, and simultaneously overlooks research that indicates starvation is an even bigger issue than cold in many places.
I'm talking about a winter climate like the article. No one is going to wrap a hive in Hawaii...But anywhere you have temperatures that drop into the minus ranges requires care. If bees are starving to death, the keeper is taking too much from them or the environment won't support them (Desert).
The ending was a little odd to me. Why would someone believe that hives aren't extended phenotype of the bee? As the article examples: hives to bees are like beavers to dams.
I felt the article pretty thoroughly explained why the author feels that hives are not currently respected as an extended phenotype. Many studies of bee behavior are run on bees in artificial hives. They are treating artificial hives as interchangeable with their natural equivalents and assuming that the behavior observed reflects normal bee behavior. This can lead to many erroneous conclusions, the same way you might get misleading studies on beaver behavior if you studied a bunch of beavers living in a rabbit hutch. To quote from the article:
> Honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies don’t hibernate. In the wild they overwinter in tree cavities that keep at least some of their numbers above 18°C in a wide range of climates, including -40°C winters. But popular understanding of their overwintering behaviour is dominated by observation of their behaviour in thin (19mm) wooden hives. These man-made hives have very different thermal properties compared with their natural habitat of thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows.
> This can lead to many erroneous conclusions, the same way you might get misleading studies on beaver behavior if you studied a bunch of beavers living in a rabbit hutch.
There is a very nice paralel to this. There was a study which suggested that the temperature of lab mice housing (which is roughly room temp) is too cold for mice. If they could they would turn the thermostate up. So they are in a constant state of low-key hypothermia, which might affect all kind of immunology and stress experiments.
Cold animals is the most obvious paralel in these two stories, but if we squint at it we can see that the paralel is that something which is done for the experimenter’s convenience might have unexpected distorting effect on results.
That seems unlikely, given that beekeepers have kept hives in similar thin-walled boxes for centuries and colony collapse is a recent phenomenon. Plus CC occurs in wild populations[1] as well, suggesting either a widespread environmental factor or communicable agent.
I wasn't suggesting it was the cause, so much as a contributor. There's a general sense that the odds of CC increase as the colony becomes more and more stressed.
I think it inaccurate to think of the hive as an extension of phenotype of an individual bee. It’s a bit recursive since it is the collection of the individual bees — the hive — that builds the physical aspects of the hive. What is interesting here is the tantalizing notion of layers of awareness and individuality and what (or more interestingly where) is the human super-organism operating.
At first I thought, the city is an extension of phenotype of an individual human.
But perhaps it's the web where the human collective thinks its super-thoughts. Or, we have no collective at all, just a bunch of individuals behaving selfishly. ..Or both, the selfish behavior adds up to our collective behavior, in which case, the human super-organism seems only dimly aware of itself.
I haven’t given up on hidden dimensions yet. For the Bee, we know chemical gradients (queen) provide a ‘center’ and likely act as hormones in an unit. I.e. beyond ‘environmental markings’ (sounds, text, images, constructs) are there other possibilities for ‘joining’? Psi stuff is wu but remains a possibility.
I had this strange thought the other day that the way all animals deal with winter is a distress behavior. Bears in hibernation, if you observe footage, look supremely ragged and uncomfortable. I don’t think it’s a pleasant experience and they just stumble through it like a human with no shelter would.
so my analogy for this type of bias is, I only want to discuss things like whether (we should have helped Ukraine resist Russia /or/ if Israel's response to Hamas is appropriate) with people who are completely honest about their motivations. If you are "anti-war" (typical meaning in the Western context) just say that you are anti-war. I can understand the position, I won't freak out, and I will make sure your vote will be counted. But I don't want to discuss it with you just to hear you invent a bunch of customized reasons why in each circumstance there's no logic to helping Ukraine or Israel, etc.
If you are ethically a vegetarian, just tell me that, don't tell me how unhealthy meat is, it's a waste of time (=a portion of both our precious lives), it's a lie, and it's bad science (as in it's motivated to a goal, not that it's necessarily wrong; if it turns out to be right, the boy-who-cried-wolf is not the right messenger).
we used to think that bees cluster to keep warm, didn't we? this person says clustering is a stress response... well, being cold can be stressful, so can taking the GREs, that doesn't mean it's not good for you. So then I read this shit:
> Deliberately inducing clustering by practice or poor hive design may be considered poor welfare or even cruelty, in light of these findings. There are almost no ethics standards for insects. But there is growing evidence that insects feel pain. A 2022 study found that bumblebees react to potentially harmful stimuli in a way that is similar to pain responses in humans. We urgently need to change beekeeping practice to reduce the frequency and duration of clustering
Nothing wrong with thinking we need to stress over reducing bee stress, but you're stressing me when I discover that I'm listening to a person obsessed with a fairly narrow slice of what it means to be a human, or what it means to be a bee.
How do you reasonably distinguish this between a serious disagreement in a debate, versus an author with an axe to grind (i.e., having hidden motivations)?
I was simply asking for people to politely do it themselves. If you want to do serious research, you need to look for your own biases, that's the honorable thing to do we would all agree. I was just posting a reminder.
I don't dismiss the ideas of a pacifist or a vegan, I would just prefer not to hear lots of repetition, especially when it's disguised.
That was a very indirect way to say you don't care for bees' housing?
And I don't agree with your point either. Auxillary arguments are good. If the bees' housing needs don't concern you. Maybe a claim that they make better honey while not stressed would.
> These man-made hives have very different thermal properties compared with their natural habitat of thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows.
Bees, including Apis mellifera will build hives anywhere where there is sufficient cover, space, and ventilation, not just "thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows".
> On cold days in these thin-walled hives, colonies form dense disks of bees, called a cluster, between the honeycombs.
The presumption is that the human made hives are less thermally protective because they are "thin-walled". This is just patently incorrect. There are many, many hive designs and many are made out of wood, but many are made out of plastics or even styrofoam. Their thermal protection can be significantly higher than 150mm wood (later noted in the article substantially insulating, such as 30mm of polystyrene".)
Bees do not form a dense "disks of bees". They form a ball, and rotate in and out with the queen around the center, just like the referenced penguins.
I could not identify the type of hives that were evaluated. From the picture, it appears to be a tiny apiary with Langstroth design, all with three full/deep/brood boxes. From the pictures in the paper, they evaluated eight hives.
I am willing to learn, but this single article provides insufficient details how the data was collected and in what context was done.
Most non-initiates think that beekeepers somehow control bee colonies like cows or chicken. Not so much. If a colony decides they want to leave, there is almost nothing you can do about it; they will leave. If they figure they did not like the winter, they will move. A hive will be just fine in a felled log, a hollow tree, or human made space for years without any interaction. It is more of a symbiotic relationship than a stewardship.
edit: spellingerating fixage