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Re:Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest by giantDinosaur on Sunday October 25, 2020 @09:05PM (#24891807)
Is it not possible to domesticate other bee species? Surely a x200 increase in efficiency would be a major reason to domesticate orchard bees, right?
Re:Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest by nend on Sunday October 25, 2020 @09:28PM (#24891930)
Orchard bees are domesticated and used as pollinators. They're solitary bees, which I'm guessing prevents usage for mass pollination of crops.

That being said there are lots of animals that can't be domesticated. Zebras are the classic example, being very similar to domesticated horses but are much more aggressive and unpredictable.

Re:Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest by saalweachter on Sunday October 25, 2020 @11:06PM (#24892503)
Yeah -- individual orchard bees are significantly more efficient, but an individual honeybee hive crams in tens of thousands of bees; you make it up on scale.

Honeybees also work well with mono-cropping because you can easily pick up and move the entire hive from massive field to massive field just in time for pollination. If you are relying on a wild bee population they'll do better when they have lots of plants in bloom across a wide spectrum of time so they have a chance to build up their population before the major blooms eg the orchard you want pollinated. Otherwise you run the risk of only have a small bee population that can't fully take advantage of (and pollinate) the suddenly massive resource glut of several square miles of orchards suddenly in bloom at once.

Re:Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest by thaumasiotes on Monday October 26, 2020 @02:46AM (#24893413)
> That being said there are lots of animals that can't be domesticated. Zebras are the classic example, being very similar to domesticated horses but are much more aggressive and unpredictable.

Interestingly, we have records of contemporary impressions of tarpans and aurochs, back when they weren't extinct. They tended to be described in terms like "absolutely untamable".

But of course they weren't.

Re:Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest by adamredwoods on Sunday October 25, 2020 @10:02PM (#24892142)
It is possible and was tried (with honey bees) in 1956, then they escaped: https://www.clemson.edu/extension/beekeepers/fact-sheets-pub...