A quick search suggests that the average American uses about 1.3 pounds of honey per year. If I’m 40 years old, and guess that I might live to be 80, that’s only 52 pounds of honey, which I could easily buy in bulk. Honey doesn’t expire, and even assuming the price doesn’t skyrocket from bee die-offs, inflation alone will make the price go up over time.
Does it make sense to buy all the rest of the honey I’ll ever need for the rest of my life, right now?
Some of this is because domesticated bees are filling the roles wild bees take. Some is temperature based, like bees just die at something like 55 or 60 degrees C. Hooray climate collapse!
Yeah - a lot of “save the bees” narratives omit the fact that honey bees are not indigenous to the US and displaced some species.
We should be just as concerned for wasps, who are essential to pollination.
i was with you until you got to the murder flies.
Baeus are absolutely adorable though, how could anyone hate a chubby wingless wasp?
Cookoo wasps are gorgeous.
Many solitary wasp species incapacitate and lay eggs in spiders - the spider bodies make tasty snacks for the babies. If you don’t like spiders - the enemy of your enemy?
It’s really only the social wasps that are aggressive though - which makes sense. They will sting and defend their hive with their lives, because that’s where their sisters and nieces live! But all wasp species are essential. We need paper wasps for pollination - even if a Polistes sting will ruin your day.