Bees

[Quant_umm]

Ive had very strong feelings about the disappearance of bees and colony collapse disorder, but yelling at my friends on how stupid pesticide companies are isnt quite helpful.
Is there anything i can do to help?
It makes me very sad that im unable to do anything while a whole species, that is crucial to human society, goes extinct.

[brimstoneSalad]

I would focus on educating people on how unhealthy honey is, to debunk that myth.
It's basically corn syrup, with extra bacteria, insect parts, and allergens in it.

If people cut back consumption of honey, that may help the situation.

Otherwise, we will probably need to wait for government action.

[Quant_umm]

I would focus on educating people on how unhealthy honey is, to debunk that myth.
It's basically corn syrup, with extra bacteria, insect parts, and allergens in it.

If people cut back consumption of honey, that may help the situation.

Otherwise, we will probably need to wait for government action.

Cutting back on honey won't really help, in my opinion. They pollinate our food help regulate the ecosystem at its core. Honey is just the tip of the iceberg. They make honey and as a result of that, plants are pollinated. Regardless they are going to make honey. Although i have to agree it honey is unhealthy and some what unethical, cutting honey consumption doesn't really feel like it may help.

[brimstoneSalad]

They make honey and as a result of that, plants are pollinated. Regardless they are going to make honey.

Bees making honey for themselves isn't the problem.

Us taking that honey away, and giving them sugar water and other things and forcing them to make even more honey is very likely contributing to the problem.

You might want to see my post here:

https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... 801&p=8725

cutting honey consumption doesn't really feel like it may help.

Well, since we don't know for sure what's causing CCD, we can't know for sure what will help. But not consuming honey is a good step in the right direction, since it's tied to a number of theories about causes of CCD.

If something is useful, it may be enough to just show that it's not very harmful, or show that it's unlikely to be very harmful (in excess of its usefulness) -- like medicine.
However, if something is useless, a greater burden must be put on showing that it is also harmless. In the case of honey, that burden has not been met.

See the precautionary principle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
Which applies even more when a practice is useless or worse (as is the case of honey).

Honey is worse than merely useless in that it is actively unhealthy, and yet through misconception and dishonest marketing promoted as a healthier alternative to sugar.
Honey is worse than merely useless in that it is wasteful in agricultural terms. We can produce comparable or superior sweeteners in every regard with greater efficiency than honey affords.

At best, honey may be blameless for CCD, but this has not been proven (and is extremely unlikely, since our practices drastically affect bees lives). We don't really know for sure what's causing it, so anything that might be causing it must be suspect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

The mechanisms of CCD and the reasons for its increasing prevalence remain unclear, but many possible causes have been proposed: pesticides, primarily neonicotinoids; infections with Varroa and Acarapis mites; malnutrition; various pathogens; genetic factors; immunodeficiencies; loss of habitat; changing beekeeping practices; or a combination of factors.[9]

The red bold cause is directly related to increase honey consumption and harvesting by humans (and replacement with sugar and other substitutes).
Orange causes are more indirectly related or more speculatively related, including increased exposure/less enzymatic breakdown, and changing the mediums for pathogens that bees are exposed to through food source replacement, inbreeding for production, etc.

Among those, loss of habitat and mites are pretty much the only things that seem unlikely to have any serious direct relation to honey harvesting (I could be wrong on that though).

A 2015 review examined 170 studies on colony collapse disorder and stressors for bees, including pathogens, agrochemicals, declining biodiversity, climate change and more. The review concluded that "a strong argument can be made that it is the interaction among parasites, pesticides, and diet that lies at the heart of current bee health problems."

[Quant_umm]

^ although I completely agree with you, i hope you realize that we do not only use bees for honey, but pollination of our crops too, and i feel like that is the major problem, i think the bee farming is a major ethical/moral issue, while collapse is more of a tragedy that we have a duty to fix (mostly because it was our fault to begin with) A lot of keepers don't have bees for the honey, but they rent them to farms to pollinate there fields. Alot of our produce is grown thanks to those bees.
Can we do anything in that respect, to counter the effects of harmful pesticide crops?

[brimstoneSalad]

^ although I completely agree with you, i hope you realize that we do not only use bees for honey, but pollination of our crops too, and i feel like that is the major problem,

Correct. But pollinating our crops isn't exactly optional. That's why we need bees. In fact, that's their main job.

We need to do whatever we can to make that job better and easier for them. One way to do that is to stop taking their honey, which will improve their nutrition and reduce their overall stress levels.

It would probably be very helpful if we distributed our agriculture more, so that different crops would flower at different times within range of a local bee population, so that we wouldn't need to truck them around from place to place.
As consumers, it's harder to have a voice in that, though. Avoiding honey is just something easy that we can do.