260
‘Could become a death spiral’: scientists discover what’s driving record die-offs of US honeybees
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
260 points (99.6% liked)
News
30882 readers
3098 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Tangentially related question:
What is the latency in the soil for this stuff? I spent 8 years working on getting my yard back to a pollinator friendly environment but we are moving now and starting over with a basic grass yard. I am assuming the previous owners were spraying all kinds of shit as we are out in the burbs.
Do you have any resources you can share for what you’ve done and will do again? My yard right now is very sparse. Literally no grass, but has 3-4ft tall weeds, moss, rocks, and a lot of mushrooms. I don’t necessarily care if I ever have a perfect lawn, but I’d like something else… more appealing.
By no means am I an expert so do some reading for your area. That said, here is how I set up my space.
I am a big fan of planting stuff that you can eat, that attracts polinators, and is low maintenance.
We have a couple varieties of basil that we let flower that brings bees in and are perennials and rosemary that flowers I have some really big mint plants that the bees love too. I basically do nothing to any of those and just let them ride. I have a couple of citrus plants that flower and bring in lots of insects. I planted grape vines that the birds love and have been really fun for my kids. They also loved the blackberry vines.
Any time I have the big clumps of clover in the lawn part of our yard, I move them to the flower beds. We also have several jasmine plants that crawl around.
I tend to do the local heirloom wildflower mixes in our side yard areas which was super great to cover up the utility boxes in our yard.
Heirloom stuff is great, I have several plants that I have re-grown from seeds inside fruit that the pests got to. 100% recommend.
I like to keep citronella and lemongrass around to help with the mosquitos. The lemongrass probably doesnt do anything unless you burn it but you can pick the citronella leaves and rub them between your hands then rub your hands on your skin and that seems to work.
Keep a fountain or bird bath around for the bugs/birds. If you can do it low to the ground, you can get frogs and other stuff too.
I tend to keep some brush in a pile for some of the other critters like salmanders, the little garden snakes, skinks, etc. You can get rats/mice though so ymmv. Rock piles are also good.
When the oak/ash trees drop leaves, I mulch them with the mower and collect them for use around the tree bases, that is supposed to be good for fireflys and stuff.
We have not watered our garden at all this year.
If you can find native plants, use them because they are already adapted to your area.
I tried to do microclover for our yard but since we had grass already it didn't really take off. I also tried using buffalo grass with the same result. I do tend to let our grass go longer, its better for water conservation and I refuse to use clean water for grass growth.
For compost, we do table scraps mixed with leaves and yard clippings. I didn't do it properly and ended up accidentally planting 10,000 papaya plants in our yard that the freeze killed off.
I have some blue salvia looking tree thing that is constantly covered in pollinators that grew super quick. They plant them on the highway medians around Houston and its been awesome. The flower smell great too.
Thanks for the giggle.