1w ago

stupid sexy apples

51 comments

Since this is Science Memes, I'm feeling emboldened to geek out a bit.
In my part of North America, there are a lot of pollinators besides bees "sexing up" the apple trees. I'm guessing it's that way in many other parts of the world, too.
On the coolest days, you might not see any bees at all, but the flower flies (aka hover flies) will still go for it. On the warmest days, bees may even be in the minority of pollinators. I see all kinds of different fly species, a multitude of different wasps, many types of beetles, and sometimes even moths and butterflies -- weather depending. Plus, even that time of year, there are often other bee species which are active besides just the invasive non-native honey bees.
- I'm going to expand on the end bit: honey bees in the Americas are invasive European honey bees (meaning they aren't invasive to Europe, or Africa and Asia either). There used to be honey bees in the Americas, but they've been extinct for an incredibly long time.

..... Don't we need more bees?
- Some of us have allergies to specific pollinators. I can’t have some honey without a scratchy throat.
  Love bees! Can’t have what they make :((
  
  You might have a superpower.
  A LOT of honey in grocery stores are actually syrup but due to capitalism, there really is no real way to tell for sure.
  If you are allergic, but won't die, from having honey, you might be able to make a guide for those of us that actually want real honey but have trouble trusting asshole companies.
  
  The allergens in honey are from where the honey was made. If you haven’t already you might try locally sourced honey as it will have the allergens that are already in the air where you live.
- We need more native pollinators, and honey bees are very good at outcompeting them once they're introduced, threatening biodiversity and thus ecosystems.
  
  Ah I'm in the UK where they are native pollinators
  
  Prime wherever you are that's not the UK defaultism to assume that honeybees are not native pollinators.
  
  Here in Europe, the European Honeybee is, not surprisingly, completely native.

love how some people's plan for surviving ecological collapse is just to craft products (that they assume are) without the endangered ecology. like, good job the assignment was to save the damn bees but yeah I'm sure all the plants will be able to survive if we smear them with synthetic honey.
- I assume this "bee-free honey" is more about veganism than about ecology.
  
  that would make sense. I'm unsure of whether it's helpful, but I forgot that goal of veganism could extend to domestic bees as well. are there any vegans who can clue me in on the thought process regarding bees?
  
  This one?
- Saving "the bees" is easy, since bees in general are doing fine.
  Saving solitary wild bees the real task, and that's much harder.
  
  I don't think they are. I could have swore that the looming death of most pollinators was on the horizon.
- Without looking it up I can confidently tell you that bee free honey isn't about "avoiding ecological collapse affecting a product," it's about vegans giving waaaay too much of a shit about bees to the point that honey is "not vegan"
  
  i like to give people the benefit of the doubt. sure there's a specific kind of environmentally concerned person who will create ineffectual solutions to non-problems because they either don't actually know about the animal or they are just gritting but I try to hear it from the horse's mouth before I assume it's entirely unhelpful
  all I have to go on are the local beekeepers I've met and they're a far different operation from what I imagine wholesale honey industry looks like. it could be as wide of a gap between the ethics of sustenance livestock vs industrial but I don't know

Bee exploitation free honey
- Bee sexploitation free honey

So the fake sugar-water honey is trying to premiumize their shit product?

Is it really honey if not made by bees?
- I don't accept it.
- Probably not, but we still call non-dairy substitutes "milk" other than some countries that regulate the label. Language tends to go by what it resembles rather than the process to generate it.
  
  I did think of the milk example, but I'd argue that's not quite an apt comparison as milk is sort of a generic term for similar things from different sources and often just any white liquid. If we had a different, special word for just cow's milk for example, it'd be weird to call anything else by that name.
  I'd argue the equivalent term to "milk" in this case would be syrup. There are many types of syrup, but we specifically use "honey" to mean "syrup made by bees".

Remember me to an label on a brick with milk "from certified farmers". Before I thought it was from cows.

Are you guys just renaming Appelstroop?

im assuming this apple based honey is for vegans so if any of y'all have tried it let me know how it would work as a honey substitute in cooking recipes, the best solution I've found so far is to ignore my chefs who tell me not to use corn syrup and mix that with brown sugar. It's obviously not the same as honey but better than just going "ah fuck it just skip it"
- Could you use agave nectar?
- I've tried / made dandelion honey and that's basically just 1:1 as far as I can tell

Scientists: "We made man-made honey that is virtually identical to real honey in every way!"
Also scientists after giving bees the synthetic honey after taking the real bee honey: "Why don't the bees like our man-made honey?"

51 comments