#BEES

[funnyguydudeguy]

imagine jerking it here

this Conversation pit is ruining my life

[fortuneaday]

[honeythegoat]

Get this man-ai-teeth-person a bee plushie please

[infectiouspiss]

a second bumblebee has hit the flowers

[iwillbefamousonedayipromise]

It's like dogs which roll on the pond and get all dirty

[saucingitup]

and this is why baseball is the best sport (see also: these baseball sidequests)

[tsatsuma69]

bees?

[skippyisntfunny]

[worrywrite]

I've seen this post every now and then. And the first few times it was funny how badly the argument against honeybees is made. But the fact of the matter is, honeybees are actually overused and invasive for North America. They're bad. People don't talk about saving the bees as much any more, but when we say save the bees it pretty much never actually means the honeybee.

Honeybees do harm the ecosystems they are placed into. Honeybees are not efficient pollinators. They require more space and resources to do less work than other pollinators and even other bees. The reason honeybees are overused in agriculture is they produce a marketable byproduct and don't directly harm the short term profit of crops. But as honeybees forcefully outcompete other pollinators, those other species go down in numbers or migrate out of agricultural regions where honeybees are deployed. And while honeybees serve a very specific ecological niche as pollinators, other bees and other pollinators (hummingbirds, butterflies, wasps, beetles, etc.) accomplish other goals as well, such as serving as food sources for other animals and stopping smaller insects from taking over large swathes of land. Honeybees, as they are venomous hive dwellers are not commonly preyed on, they do little to interact with other species as long as they keep away from their hive, and really only care about pollen and nectar.

Anyway, I encourage folks to read the Wikipedia page for pollinators and find one that isn't a honeybee and read more about them. It's a fascinating ecological niche and incredibly diverse. Also honeybees suck, sunbird gang rise up.

Wild that folks keep saying beekeepers abuse bees as if bees are not both venomous flying animals and fully unionized

[hometoursandotherstuff]

I can't unsee the cats, and bees don't have ears, unless they're supposed to be wings? Antennae? Dammit, those are cats.

[catchymemes]

[theriu]

For as popular as the idea of a "hivemind" is we never talk about how it doesn't exist in nature. There's no animal colony that connects and controls all its members through a psychic connection. Even bees, the eponimous hivemind, communicate by pheremones and, more importantly, interpretive dance. My point is when are we going to get a movie about an intensely organized alien race that mainly communicates via sick dance moves, why are we sleeping on this.

[titsay]

[mintflavoredart]

[reasonsforhope]

"A Scottish field once home to mono-crop barley has become a pollinator’s paradise after intervention from a local trust saw bumblebee numbers increase 100-fold.

Entitled Rewilding Denmarkfield, and run by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, the project has also seen a sharp increase in the number of species passing through the rolling meadows after they were reclaimed by dozens of wildflower species.

The area north of Perth is about 90 acres in size, and surveys of bumblebees before the project began rarely recorded more than 50. But by 2023, just two years of letting “nature take the lead” that number has topped 4,000, with the number of different bee species doubling.

“This superb variety of plants attracts thousands of pollinators. Many of these plants, such as spear thistle and smooth hawk’s beard, are sometimes branded as ‘weeds’. But they are all native species that are benefiting native wildlife in different ways,” Ecologist Ellie Corsie, who has been managing the project since it began in 2021, said.

“Due to intensive arable farming, with decades of plowing, herbicide, and pesticide use, biodiversity was incredibly low when we started. Wildlife had largely been sanitized from the fields. Rewilding the site has had a remarkable benefit.”

Similar increases have been recorded in the populations of butterflies, with a tripling in the number of these insects seen on average during a ramble through the field.

The numbers of both insects are now so high that Rewilding Denmarkfield offers bee and butterfly safaris to visitors.

Local residents told the Scotsman that on spring and summer days, the field is awash with color, and hums with the sounds of bees and birds. Even as multiple housing developments expand around the Denmarkfield area, the field is a haven for wildlife."

-via Good News Network, December 2, 2024