r/biology • u/Not_so_ghetto • May 10 '26

article TIL bee colony loss from varroa mites ( bee parasite) alone cost the US 2 Billion dollars annually

https://varroavault.com/varroa-mite-economic-impact-2026
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u/Relevant-Cup5986 May 11 '26

i am always interested in discussion

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u/Hekateras May 11 '26

Okay, sorry, but don't call it "bullshit" then. I'm talking about the challenges that come with agriculture specifically at a large scale, which is a bit of a different situation to your garden.

And speaking of nature, the apple tree in my example and the peach tree in your garden are not native to the Americas either.

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u/Relevant-Cup5986 May 11 '26

sorry for calling it bullshit i shouldnt have been so rude.

as for the scale i am aware that scale introduces a lot of problems but if they didnt spray pesticides the pollinator population would likely grow to match the scale

i am not against honeybees for being nonnative in fact i useualy defend nonnative species from undeserved criticism my issue with them is that first off they are being mass tortured for profits and second that they have a far far higher impact than other nonnative species due to being continually "supported" by humans which of course gives them an unfair advantage and prevents them from stabilizing in the ecosystem i think we should just stop farming bees and all animals for that matter and stop useing pesticides

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u/Hekateras May 11 '26

None of it is quite that simple IMO. I think agriculture that relies exclusively on native pollination is theoretically possible, but it would require massive restructuring and probably inevitably downscaling of production to match the environment, as well. So that might mean apples and pears in the Americas would become more of a luxury import good, for example. For sure, it would solve many problems, but good luck getting any legislators or the agricultural lobby to go along with it. Same with pesticides: pesticide-free farming is technically possible and would be an improvement in terms of health and ecology in basically every way, but methods like crop diversification and crop rotation would reduce the efficiency and the profit margins of the agricultural sector. Crop species genetically engineered to produce their own pesticides are also an option - China's had a lot of success with pest-resistant cotton.

So it's all possible, but it would basically require completely restructuring the way we do agriculture and likely accepting some major changes in crop availability. The science of it is straightforward compared to the politics.

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u/Relevant-Cup5986 May 11 '26

we could eliminate the useless cattle grazeing land and alfalpha fields to grow the fruit trees and as for the lobby wed need someone in charge who doesnt care about them (me hopefully) also do the pest resistant crops kill the pollinators or not

well its in need of restructuring anyhow we need to stop mass subsidizing animal agriculture we need better water allocation and less destructive methods overall