To bee or not to bee*

Posted 1 March 2013 by Matt Young

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that wild bees pollinate plants more efficiently than domesticated European honeybees. Not only that, they are free, whereas domesticated honeybees have to be rented and are becoming more expensive because of colony collapse disorder. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported a striking decline in the number of wild bee species and, in particular, of the once-familiar furry, yellow, and black American bumblebee. *Sorry, could not resist.

18 Comments

DavidK · 2 March 2013

Don't know where they live, but many, many bees swarm over my many lavender plants!

Paul Burnett · 2 March 2013

I've counted as many as 15 tp 20 different species of bees swarming on a wisteria in full bloom.

apokryltaros · 2 March 2013

Well, fragrant, blue to purple flowers are extremely attractive to bees, after all.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/JxVN0eQFqtmgoY7wC1cZM44ET_iAanxHQmLgYgX_Zhn8#57cad · 2 March 2013

Bees have had it too good for too long.

Just thought I should point that out.

Glen Davidson

Joe Felsenstein · 3 March 2013

What were bees doing on Noah's ark during all those days and nights? Or did those different species of bees all evolve from one catatonic beehive, after the ark landed?

Paul Burnett · 3 March 2013

Joe Felsenstein said: What were bees doing on Noah's ark during all those days and nights? Or did those different species of bees all evolve from one catatonic beehive, after the ark landed?

Do you know about carpenter bees? They drill holes in wooden objects. There are currently about 500 species of carpenter bees - I wonder how many species were on Noah's ark? (One must similarly wonder how many of the 2,800 species of termites were on Noah's ark, as well as woodboring beetles and beavers and other creatures...)

Just Bob · 3 March 2013

Joe Felsenstein said: What were bees doing on Noah's ark during all those days and nights? Or did those different species of bees all evolve from one catatonic beehive, after the ark landed?

Non, non, mon cher, remember, only a PAIR of each "kind". That must mean one queen and one drone. The same must apply for every social insect.

RWard · 3 March 2013

Yes, adaptive radiation and speciation most likely came after the Ark came to rest.

If all that speciation occurred in the short time since Noah was supposed to have sailed the ocean blue, one would expect nucleotide divergence among the various bee species to be negligible. Funny, that's not what we see. Just as an example, see the following paper by Leys et al. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790300908510

Karen S. · 3 March 2013

Do you know about carpenter bees? They drill holes in wooden objects. There are currently about 500 species of carpenter bees - I wonder how many species were on Noah’s ark? (One must similarly wonder how many of the 2,800 species of termites were on Noah’s ark, as well as woodboring beetles and beavers and other creatures…)

Did you know there were exactly 2 barnacles attached to the hull of the ark? And that Noah had to go fishing with just 2 worms?

Just Bob · 3 March 2013

Karen S. said: Did you know there were exactly 2 barnacles attached to the hull of the ark? And that Noah had to go fishing with just 2 worms?

And what did he feed all the lions and tigers and bears, oh my! And tyrannosaurs and allosaurs and crocodiles and velociraptors and dire wolves and thylacenes and sabretooths and...

W. H. Heydt · 3 March 2013

Just Bob said:
Karen S. said: Did you know there were exactly 2 barnacles attached to the hull of the ark? And that Noah had to go fishing with just 2 worms?
And what did he feed all the lions and tigers and bears, oh my! And tyrannosaurs and allosaurs and crocodiles and velociraptors and dire wolves and thylacenes and sabretooths and...

Why do you think there aren't any unicorns any more?

SWT · 3 March 2013

W. H. Heydt said:
Just Bob said:
Karen S. said: Did you know there were exactly 2 barnacles attached to the hull of the ark? And that Noah had to go fishing with just 2 worms?
And what did he feed all the lions and tigers and bears, oh my! And tyrannosaurs and allosaurs and crocodiles and velociraptors and dire wolves and thylacenes and sabretooths and...
Why do you think there aren't any unicorns any more?

I thought their extinction was due to overhunting.

Henry J · 3 March 2013

Why do you think there aren’t any unicorns any more?

They evolved into narwhals?

Tenncrain · 3 March 2013

Henry J said:
Why do you think there aren’t any unicorns any more?
They evolved into narwhals?

Actually, the long fossilized tusks of narwhals cut across multiple layers of strata, therefore showing rapid deposition from the Flood while demolishing the silly idea of vast time scales ;)

Mike Elzinga · 3 March 2013

W. H. Heydt said:
Just Bob said:
Karen S. said: Did you know there were exactly 2 barnacles attached to the hull of the ark? And that Noah had to go fishing with just 2 worms?
And what did he feed all the lions and tigers and bears, oh my! And tyrannosaurs and allosaurs and crocodiles and velociraptors and dire wolves and thylacenes and sabretooths and...
Why do you think there aren't any unicorns any more?

Here is the story of what happened.

stevaroni · 4 March 2013

W. H. Heydt said: Why do you think there aren't any unicorns any more?

I've explained this before. Noah organized the animals alphabetically. Unfortunately, this left the unicorns in the pen next to the tyrannosaurs. When first one, then the other unicorn went missing, and searches turned up nothing except T-rexes trying to avoid eye contact, the writing was on the wall. That night, all the dinosaurs would be invited up to the lido deck for the "Enchantment Under The Stars" dance and there was an... unfortunate... incident with an abrupt change of course. "The great tack" proved too much for the tall lizards with their high centers of gravity, and apparently, the termites had been at the gopher-wood railings. The crocodilians were low to the ground, so they held on, but from then on they tended to harbor a vague sense of paranoia toward the humans that persists to this day.

Karen S. · 4 March 2013

If all that speciation occurred in the short time since Noah was supposed to have sailed the ocean blue, one would expect nucleotide divergence among the various bee species to be negligible. Funny, that’s not what we see.

But we're not supposed to look

Just Bob · 4 March 2013

https://me.yahoo.com/a/NYurV78hguWQI07mDM4_ByAK9ua3chsB40bC4MLUp65DdaTj#ecf65 said: No. We should look and conclude that rapid devolution has occurred.

But we HAVE looked, and what the facts force us to conclude is that EVOLUTION has occurred, over much longer than 4,000 years, and that "devolution" is biological nonsense: species don't change to become LESS adapted to their current environments.