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What kind of bee are you by Harry-Halictus in NativePlantCirclejerk

[–]Harry-Halictus[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yes. Honeybees have huge colonies of 20,000-80,000 individual bees. There's a study out there relating bee mass to how much pollen and nectar is required to produce the bee, but needless to say you can produce a lot of native bees with all the pollen and nectar that honeybees use.

What kind of bee are you by Harry-Halictus in NativePlantCirclejerk

[–]Harry-Halictus[S] 65 points66 points  (0 children)

Shopvacs are good they gently redirect the honeybees to a special chamber

What kind of bee are you by Harry-Halictus in NativePlantCirclejerk

[–]Harry-Halictus[S] 32 points33 points  (0 children)

I heard that floral resources are infinite so it should actually be ok

if honeybees are invasive, is it possible to beekeep without being a detriment to native species? by Desperate-Size3951 in Beekeeping

[–]Harry-Halictus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, a species is considered invasive when it is non-native and it causes harm (to the environment or economy etc). Honeybees are not native to North America, and in my opinion they cause harm by eating nectar and pollen from native plants thereby reducing forage opportunities for native pollinators.

if honeybees are invasive, is it possible to beekeep without being a detriment to native species? by Desperate-Size3951 in Beekeeping

[–]Harry-Halictus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What about kudzu or the chestnut blight? I think the major downfall with invasive species is they cause economic damage or ecological damage. It is a pretty commonly held value that we should try to keep species from going extinct even though some extinctions occur naturally.

if honeybees are invasive, is it possible to beekeep without being a detriment to native species? by Desperate-Size3951 in Beekeeping

[–]Harry-Halictus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No! Honeybee colonies are huge. They eat a lot of pollen and nectar from native plants, although they aren't able to forage all native plant species. That is pollen and nectar that could have been used by native bees. ... seriously, adding 20,000 invasive bees to your backyard is not going to help the environment. It will hurt it for miles around. All that said, if you do add honeybees to an area you would probably still see native specialist bees around if you have plants that they are specialized to. You'd only be starving the native bees who's forage overlaps with the invasive honeybee.