Originally Posted by Giant Octopodes
Bees and I don't get along.
The tipping point was when, as a kid, I had a bee somehow in my shoe, and under my shirt, at the same time, and was stung by both of them. At that point, it felt personal, and despite not having allergies I've carried an irrational fear and hatred of them all through my life. As such, despite being a man of science who logically understands the important role bees play in nature, if I had the opportunity to wipe out all bees on the planet I'm not sure I could avoid the temptation to push the button.
The reason I'm chiming in here is because I heard some interesting stories recently regarding the alternative, when bees are wiped out. In several areas of China, bees have indeed been driven to extinction. As such, farmers are currently employing what might best be described as "human bees", or manual pollinators. When researching the story, what they found was that the manual pollinators actually did a Better job than bees, and fruit yields in the area were up by 30%. Initially, this also was accompanied by large economic growth due to rising demand for low wage labor.
However, as China has increased in economic prosperity, wage increases have made it so that it's increasingly unprofitable to hire those manual pollinators, causing economic hardship. Where things will go from there remains to be seen, but it's interesting just that humans were able to pick up the slack, and I wonder what tools and automation might be developed were this to become a big problem in the USA.
Regardless, I'm thankful some folk care enough to keep bees around and care for them, even if personally I'll likely kill all the ones I encounter. I won't however poison the land around my home with pesticides and especially not that vile filth Round Up, so I do my part to not drive them to extinction, even if ultimately those who will determine their fate are large agricultural grow operations rather than individuals.
I will toss out as a random final tangent that the label "organic" is meaningless in the vast majority of states, including yours, as it carries no regulatory weight. So if you want to fight back against the poisoning of our soil which is driving bees to extinction in more ways than just beekeeping, don't buy "organic", buy instead that which is specifically and explicitly labelled as "pesticide free", as that actually means something.
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