Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Moreover, the article entirely ignores wild bees. That's somewhat understandable as they're not as well studied, but they're a significant pollination force nevertheless -- according to this White House fact sheet [1], wild bees accounted for $9 billion of the economic benefit of pollination (compared to $15 billion for domesticated bees). The wild bees are not being replaced. This article really does have a lot of dodgy accounting (esp ignoring externalized costs).

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/06/20/fact-... [PNAS] Bumblebees: http://www.duluth.umn.edu/biology/documents/MaKarrall2_000.p...



Shamelessly plugging a related project, I recently contributed to a game [1] designed to illustrate that wild bee populations have economic value. Jana Vamosi, a biologist from the University of Calgary, submitted the project idea to the Mozilla Science Lab [2] to get help building it. There's a lot of room for improvement, actually, if anyone wants to lend a hand.

[1] http://www.diversibee.org

[2] https://www.mozillascience.org/projects/diversibee


I find it incredibly sad that the only way to make people care about the destruction of wild bees is to talk about how much economic benefit they provide.




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: