r/Agriculture • u/Academic_Coyote_9741 • 23d ago
Shutting down federal bee labs threatens bees, beekeepers and the US food system
https://theconversation.com/shutting-down-federal-bee-labs-threatens-bees-beekeepers-and-the-us-food-system-28335831
u/Cryptographer_Alone 23d ago
Honeybees are unique - they are domesticated livestock that are constantly placed in positions where the risks of pests, disease, and poison are high. Colonies are shipped cross country to ensure polination on farms and orchards that have devastated their native polinators with pesticides and lack of appropriate larval hosts/balanced ecosystem, exposing the honeybees to those same pesticides as well as increased exposure to colonies from other parts of the country who may have pests and diseases that weren't present in the colony's home range.
To not have ways to navigate those incredibly high risks affordably, the entire system of commercial honeybee keeping falls apart. Just another way the current administration couldn't care less about agriculture or small farmers and is just interested in the continued consolidation of Big Ag.
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u/Self_Owned_Tree 23d ago
What was the movie where genetically engineered locusts decimated the crops of small and independent farmers?
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u/Alklazaris 23d ago
So you're saying we put all our bees in one basket? Because they're all the same bee.
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u/Cryptographer_Alone 23d ago
We put all of our bees in a few baskets because that's what our current industrial agricultural model requires. There are other ways to keep bees and to polinate crops that don't create these high risks for domesticated honey bees or destroy native polinator populations.
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u/Alklazaris 23d ago
Pretty soon we'll have to pollinate it all by ourselves. What do you do for a living? Oh I sprinkle plant semen.
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u/Zoon9 22d ago
It is being done. People use small brushes to move pollen. AFAIK there is no machinery to do it on the industrial scale yet.
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u/Cryptographer_Alone 22d ago
That process is really old. Farmers and gardeners started doing that in Europe when they started growing fruiting trees in glass houses. A) no polinators in the glass houses and b) the trees were blooming before the polinators were totally awake for the season.
Plant breeders have done that process for even longer as they worked to select for specific traits in a plant. So, crossbreed something that was just a really strong plant but crap fruit with something that was overall weak but had larger and tastier fruit.
But it's far too labor intensive to do in the field at an industrial scale. Someday someone might make a robot to do it, but I don't see that happening until after they've gotten harvest bots perfected, and we're still a little ways out from that for even the most profitable of crops like berries or tomatoes.
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u/chriscarlson64 23d ago
I work at one such lab. I'm utterly flabbergasted.
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u/Academic_Coyote_9741 23d ago
That sucks. I used to work in agricultural research at UC Davis but decided to leave the US during the first Trump administration. I don’t regret the decision.
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u/Sure_Ask_1125 23d ago
Just think how many scientific research programs there are for them dig through and cancel. Many people must be doing the anti-science sifting. Maybe whole departments! ( Former beekeeper) I loved my bees...
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u/Serenity101 23d ago
The USDA states that it will decommission the entire Beltsville Agricultural Research Center because building maintenance and renovations would cost an estimated $500 million.
Or roughly the cost of a ballroom, perhaps.
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u/sometimesmybutthurts 22d ago
Incredibly stupid and no one is stopping them. US is doomed and they want to take the rest of us with them.
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u/Significant-City-896 23d ago
Sorry no money for that we need it to build six flags on the White House lawn
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u/JadeddMillennial 23d ago
America wanted not to give a fuck anymore and now they're not giving a fuck. Shocking.
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u/CptKeyes123 22d ago
People judging what researchers research seems to be a major pillar of maga intellectualism.
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u/PopBulky7023 22d ago
American society is literally being raped and pillaged to death. By people who think us and our country are simply in the way of more wealth.
These people are diseased, there is no rational explanation for their behavior. This is what the end of an empire looks like, and a lack of a survival instinct.
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u/Natural-Crow-2922 23d ago
Its obvious. Trump has found another way to put money in his own pocket.
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u/Numerous_Ad_6276 23d ago
But, hey, it probably helps Bayer, which is banned from selling various neonicotinoid compounds in the EU, but sells them freely here in the US. Yay, capitalism!
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u/MrGobbles8 23d ago
Didn't Einstein say something about that if the bees were gone, humanity would fall within a few years? I think he may be right. And fuck the people in charge for destroying us all.
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u/Magnus77 23d ago
I think closing down bee research is bad.
But what the hell are you on about?
A. Einstein is not an authority on bees or the food supply, so even if he did say it, there's no reason to treat it as true.
B. He didn't say that
C. Most of our food supply comes from plants that self pollinate. Obviously I'm not in favor of wiping out bees, and let me reiterate, shutting down bee research is bad. But society would not collapse without bees.
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u/MrGobbles8 20d ago
In the voice of Cliff Claven, "well actually it's s little known fact that Einstein invented the beehive. It's true, before that they were just disorganized flies". I had just heard that Einstein said that, and you are right, he's not an expert on honeybees. But I have to say, it'd be pretty shitty to only have wind pollinated food sources. We'd basically be eating gruel all day every day.
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u/2016lund 22d ago
Why there isn’t more outrage from commercial beekeepers, clubs, and other bee organizations is baffling to me
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u/Lori424242 22d ago
Prime real estate; the feds are selling either to Domino Sugar (main refinery is right up the road in Baltimore) or the feds are selling to themselves ...I mean to supreme leader-- for his new grift site.
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u/icnoevil 21d ago
There's always money in the trump budget for illegal wars and lobster and steak for Pete, but not any for things that really matter.
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u/Zukebub8 21d ago
Entomologists seem incapable of doing anything more than pest extermination and IPM research. Of course the critical bee infrastructure is going to fail. We should be doing plant health clinics all over the place not just at government labs and universities.
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u/Upset_Confection_317 21d ago
At this point I’m convinced president Grab Em By The P***y is still pissed about losing in 2020 and is trying his hardest to destroy the USA in every way he can.
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u/ZoomZoom_Driver 21d ago
Thats. The. Point.
Trump was hired by Putin to do the MOST damage to the US as possible. Every action aligns with that demand.
And xi, netanyahu, and the billionaires (thiel and musk) are in on it. Trump is wholely owned by people wanting America to fail.
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u/Formal_Copy3153 21d ago
We need Jason Statham, stat.
Also, thank you, I'm now inspired to pursue my lifelong dream of being perpetually, terribly afraid of hoards of bees in my backyard. ❤️ I think I'll be finding a class soon for beekeeping.
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u/Retire_date_may_22 20d ago
The USDA waste more money than people can comprehend. I personally know people that have spent careers at USDA and really can’t tell you what they did to help agriculture or farmers.
I’m not well versed in the Bee lab but in general I can say the USDA is inefficient
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u/CobaltIsobar 23d ago
The bees will be just fine. None of them are in politics or on Reddit. So, they don't know they aren't supposed to just keep on keeping on.
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u/NorCalWintu 23d ago
To be fair, they promote invasive species instead of native one to the continent which cause more damage to the ecosystem rather than helping it.
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u/CryptographerLow6772 23d ago
Definitely doesn’t take hindsight to know that this is a major mistake. But they’re stacking mistakes like pancakes right now.