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The main cause of wild bee declines is likely the introduced disease from managed bees. How does adding more managed bees to a system solve this problem?
Conserving our native bee biodiversity is a food security & climate justice issue. Homogenizing bee communities by adding 1000s of non-native insects, which also take food to keep them awake over the winter, reduces our resiliency with increased global change.
Many ppl rely on their own gardens to fresh food to feed their families. Study after study shows diverse wild bee communities are better pollinators for crop plants. Bringing in managed hives, then removing them, leaves the ppl relying on free ecosystem services out of luck.
There is money involved in hobby beekeeping. There are companies who send similar msgs as this article, that somehow having hives on your property is helping bee populations. To which there is zero evidence. Hobby beekeeping is not some neutral, non-industrial, practice.
Beekeeping is a privileged hobby which many food insecure people would not be able to undertake. And it puts at risk food security for people in a space who cannot afford to pay for replacement pollination.
This article shows clearly why people interested in wildlife conservation should pay attention to conservation biologists. I personally only work with ENGOs who understand this and work closely with conservationists.
*by main cause of wil bee decline, I'm referring to what we know about the bumblebee species assessed as at-risk of extinction. There is a lot more work to do to better understand declines for un-assessed species.
Just for "fun", let me share this recent paper from Mark Brown's research group. scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&…
We are playing with fire when it comes to mixing wildlife with new diseases. It's probably best that we don't ignore that and pretend we are doing wild insects some sort of service.
Cities could be where wild bees are protected from managed bee diseases. Farmers need/want to use management bees in ag areas for mass pollination. Cities should appreciate how important supporting native bee communities are for environmental & social justice reasons.
The City of Toronto's strategy was informed by conservationists and should be a model for other large cities. toronto.ca/services-payme…
I also take issue with the idea that industrial ag is an area where we can't see movement on wild bee conservation. I think there is so much potential working w/ farmers. This is a focus of my current research.
See the amazing work being done by @xercessociety and so many others across Canada and the US. xerces.org/guidelines-far…
I'm not commenting on the ethics of buying honey here, but this article completely disregards maple syrup as an option for a locally sourced sweetener. 🥞🍁
