Tag Archives: pollinators

robot pollinators

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Somehow, startup companies have heard about my idea for robotic bees. (This is a Wall Street Journal article, which I don’t subscribe to, but I can get the idea from the first couple paragraphs. Sorry guys, I can’t afford to subscribe to anything, and if I have to pick one thing it will probably be to support my local paper. Except, if I lived in New York, it would not be the New York Times because weapons of mass destruction.) More likely, it’s a fairly obvious idea. And probably a good idea, if the pollinators really are disappearing worldwide. Then again, it’s a partial technological solution to replace a lost ecosystem service. Trucking around hives of domesticated honeybees to replace or supplement natural pollinators in farm fields is already a technological solution, if you think about it. Important questions: Do they sting? (I hope the answer is an obvious no.) Are we going to release clouds of robot pollinators into natural ecosystems? Probably not, this seems focused on agriculture. Are they going to be solar powered? It seems like it would be safer to have them return to a charging station, or else drop dead if their batteries run out.

This also brings up all the usual questions about valuing ecosystem services. Pollination is absolutely essential to life on earth, so pollinators are incredibly valuable in an economic sense. If we replace them with technology, does their value drop? In an economic sense, yes. In a moral sense, I would say no, at least to me.

Pollinator Park

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Pollinator Park is a sort of virtual botanical park tour created by the EU. The idea is to show us “what a world without pollinators would be like”. It sounds and looks cool, but didn’t load correctly in my web browser. It is also supposed to work in Oculus Rift, which I am sure is cool. There are some nice pictures in this Inhabitat article.

I have certainly heard that pollinators, and insects more generally, are disappearing, not just on a species diversity basis but on an absolute biomass basis. It makes complete sense that the loss and fragmentation of natural habitats and native vegetation would lead to a loss of insects. Pollution, agricultural chemicals, and climate change (heat/drought/fires/floods/storms) can’t be helping. I have seen at least one dissenting paper on insect loss however and would like to understand the evidence for it better. But taken at face value, it is very concerning. Pollination is undoubtedly a critical ecosystem service that we can’t do without, and this is fairly easy to understand. Unless we can go to some kind of high-tech indoor agriculture, which currently would not be a feasible way to feed 7+ billion people.

I’d also like to understand to what extent it is important to preserve some natural habitat and native vegetation (or other pollinator-friendly vegetation?) in the midst of farmland to maintain yields. What size and what shape should these habitat islands or corridors be, and do they need to be paired with specific crops? More esoterically, if you change the type of crop being grown but leave the insects and vegetation in place, does the ecosystem service value diminish? (economically, yes, but logically and morally, this makes no sense to me and I think it helps illustrate the limits of the economic approach.) Could these designed/managed habitats act as useful buffer/transition areas to more natural preserved areas? Or would they do the opposite, importing non-native plants and animals that would have an adverse impact? Can urban and suburban parks and gardens play a meaningful role? Or is it hopeless and only trying to preserve vast swathes of untouched wilderness would do? (maybe add a placeholder for this on our next planet.) Should we be releasing vast swarms of genetically modified or self-replicating robot insects? (I’m going to go with no!)

native plant and pollinator gardening in Pennsylvania

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This post has a ton of information on gardening with native plants and gardening for pollinators in Pennsylvania – sources of plants and seeds, recommended species and combinations of species for various conditions, and links to a variety of government and non-profit organizations that can provide even more information.

February 2020 in Review

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Ah, the innocent days of February 2020! (I’m writing this on March 14.) Just two weeks ago, the coronovirus shit hadn’t yet hit the fan in the U.S. (the Pennsylvania governor just ordered schools closed statewide, I have been strongly encouraged, though not coerced, to work from home, the governor has implemented not-strictly-enforced movement restrictions in several neighboring counties and mine could be next, and the closure of all businesses except grocery stores, drug stores and gas stations appears to be next – and yes, this appears to include bars and liquor stores. Luckily, Pennsylvania just recently lifted Prohibition and started allowing some grocery stores to sell beer and wine.) Anyway, coronavirus is about the only thing on anyone’s mind at the moment, even considering we are in an election year (Bernie Sanders looked like a front-runner two weeks ago!) But let’s rewind the clock two weeks and see what was on my mind in more normal times.

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

Most hopeful story:

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • Corporate jargon really is funny. I still don’t know what “dropping a pin” in something means, but I think it might be like sticking a fork in it.



neonicotinoids

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The problem with neoniconitoid pesticides, according to this Intercept article, is not that they kill bees directly, but that they weaken their immune systems so that they succumb to fungal infections. Sick bees have an instinct to fly away from the hive and die quietly somewhere to protect the hive. And the concentrations that cause this are so low they are not even detectable in monitoring data.

game of (bee) thrones

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Queen bees demand, and receive, absolute loyalty from their hives. When they are nearing the end of their reigns, they try to arrange to keep their family in power and have one of their daughters assume the throne. But that doesn’t always work out and the struggle over succession can be pretty brutal. This might give George R.R. Martin some ideas.

As far as I can tell, my queen died sometime in the spring. Queens typically live for about four or five years, so this caught me by surprise. A new queen, however, is a regular event in the life of a hive. Beekeepers frequently replace their queens every year or two to introduce genetic variety and ensure that the hive has a strong monarch who can lay enough eggs to keep the population up. Bees can also raise their own queen, and when I did an inspection early that spring, I was pleased to see that mine had taken the initiative. Before she died, my old queen must have laid a few fertilized eggs that worker bees raised as replacements. They would have selected six or seven fertilized (female) eggs and fed them only royal jelly. When the first queen hatched, she would have immediately killed any unhatched competition and ideally flown a few mating flights, storing enough semen in her abdomen to spend the rest of her life laying eggs.

While a newborn queen may seem ruthless, the success of a beehive hinges on allegiance to its queen. Though she can mate with an average of 12 different drones, there is only one queen, which makes for a hive of closely related bees. As a new queen begins to produce her own pheromones, the hive slowly aligns with her as the old bees die and new workers hatch. In a sense, the hive is genetically wired to be loyal to the monarchy. If the hive was to raise multiple queens, or if the workers were to start laying eggs, the interests of the population would slowly fracture…

Bees have about 165 pheromone receptors on their antennae and though it’s not entirely clear how workers “decide” what to do and when (the question of agency is still very much up for debate), it is certain that the queen’s pheromones prompt them to go about their business. When the reigning monarch dies or stops laying eggs in her old age, the change in her pheromones prompts the hive to raise a replacement, as my hive had done. Similarly, if a new queen arrives and releases her pheromones before those of the old queen have dispersed, the hive will consider the new queen an invader, and kill her. Above all, they are loyal to their queen. I did not fully grasp this fact. Because I waited only six hours between queens, the worker bees probably stung my new queen to death within an hour.

bees

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Here’s a nice example of how diversity is related to resilience. As honeybees are having more problems, farmers are learning to use combinations of other bees, including bumblebees, to get the same pollination effect.

just like in the apple orchards, scientists are finding that between those two kinds of bees, farmers can probably get by without using honeybees. It’s all part of a new strategy of diversification that entomologist Shelby Fleischer affectionately refers to as Plan B.

“I think the key to remember is resilience,” Fleischer says. “So don’t just aim for any one species. Historically, there’s been a lot of emphasis on making honeybees our pollinator, and resilience suggests that we should try and support a community of bees.”

bumblebees

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Science says bumblebees are being “crushed” by climate change. Apparently their fur coats are too hot at the southern edge of their range, and they aren’t expanding north because so far there is not the kind of vegetation they need to the north.

…climate change could further strain species already struggling with dwindling habitat and other pressures, Kerr says. “We’re hitting these animals with everything,” he says. “There’s no way you can nail a bee with neonicotinoids, invasive pathogens, and climate change and come out with a happy bee.”

The loss of bee species could carry consequences for ecosystems and people. For instance, “plants that like their pollinators to be pretty loyal” could see declines in reproduction, says ecologist Laura Burkle of Montana State University, Bozeman. And given that wild bees help pollinate many crops, “we play with these things at our peril,” Kerr says. “The human enterprise is the top floor in a really big scaffold. What we’re doing is reaching out and knocking out the supports.”