Why are all of you commenting out of complete ignorance and near absolute lack of domain knowledge? Taking sides and making accusations from this frame of reference is just plain wrong.
It's like watching a bunch of bee-keepers engage in a heated debate about a memory leak in your iOS app after reading an article and a Wikipedia page --not one of them being a programmer.
I'd love to hear from bee biologists or someone otherwise scientifically qualified in the domain. Everything else is just noise.
As an aside, I pass through Bakersfield a few times a year on our way to one of our camping destinations. It's interesting to learn that all those beehives are rented and trucked in.
Why are all of you commenting out of complete ignorance and near absolute lack of domain knowledge?
If that's a serious question, because we're pattern-matching this issue with other ones we're emotionally invested in -- archetypical issues of technological progress and ecology. Pre-existing cached narratives.
When the top comment is from someone whose source of information is "his step dad, beekeeper", pointing out the problem as "the pesticides" (although which ones, amongst a broad array of substances, are not specified. All of them?), I'd say it's a very serious question.
Why do you assume this? Maybe you just sit in your mom's basement reading the internet, but my life-long ambition has been farming, i just program computers for the side money. I lease some of my land near Davis to an almond producer, so I happen to know quite a bit about this topic.
Help me understand please. How does owning land and leasing it to an almond farmer result in knowing quite a bit about this problem? I'll grant you that you might be seeing bees die and the effect this might have on crops. Not sure that helps understand the problem.
Are you a biologist? Perhaps a chemist? Virologist? Have you devoted decades to researching bee biology? Have you performed controlled studies on your land or lab to isolate potential vectors, contagions, chemicals and observe their effects over a number of populations and over time? Have you published any research papers based on your work?
Not taking sides other than to say that this is a complex problem that only true science can resolve. You could stop all insecticides and chemical treatments for a few years and see what happens. No need for a PhD on that one, but you have to be willing to make huge sacrifices in terms of crop yields.
Almond-growing depends heavily on bee pollination, so people farming that particular crop are at the sharp end of this problem. Also, UC Davis is academic ground central for research into this problem, and the university researchers have been working closely with farmers in the area for the last few years.
I understand and share your desire for scientific rigor in this discussion, but don't be a prick about it.
It's like watching a bunch of bee-keepers engage in a heated debate about a memory leak in your iOS app after reading an article and a Wikipedia page --not one of them being a programmer.
I'd love to hear from bee biologists or someone otherwise scientifically qualified in the domain. Everything else is just noise.
As an aside, I pass through Bakersfield a few times a year on our way to one of our camping destinations. It's interesting to learn that all those beehives are rented and trucked in.