this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2025
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The kinds of bees in the US are not native to the US. Plants were pollinated in the US long before Africanized or European honey bees were brought over.
Bigger problem is that we're killing generalized insect populations, so the quantity of insects is on a decline.
That doesn’t make premise of the original statement untrue. It’s pretty irrelevant that honeybees aren’t native because their mass pollination does make our food production work the way it does and there’s no way natives can do the job. You might as well just as effectively point out less humans would be better so we don’t need as many crops produced. You might be right, but you’re yelling at clouds.
As far as killing off too many insects in general is concerned, fuck yes that’s a problem. Our worries revolve around crops, but there’s a shitload of nature that still depends on natural pollinators and other insects to do all kinds of jobs. We kill them off and we’re screwed.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious if you have relevant peer reviewed information to back that statement up.
Nope. There are multiple papers citing native pollinators as “gap fillers” for crop pollination, but none suggesting they can take over completely. On top of that, honey bees can be managed like livestock and hives can be moved en masse to where pollination is needed, something that cannot be done with natives.
To be fair, the crops didn't exist when the native pollinators were alpha, so the argument is semi-irrelevant. Again, the bigger problem is just that insect populations are failing. The focus should be fixing that, with that comes the bees. Although, that means fixing climate change. Soooo....
To be fair? You can’t just say that and remove the point of the discussion - the pollination of modern agricultural methods - and then say it’s Irrelevant. What kind of argument is that?
Wild pollinators are nice for us home gardeners but they cannot sustain the high production of commercial produce farming.
If we went to a no-domestic-pollinator system it would dramatically cut food production and jack up food prices.