Honeybees are livestock. They're no more endangered than chickens or cows. If we need more, we just breed more.

In most places honeybees are raised they couldn't even survive in the wild. Just like cows and chickens and pigs. As with most livestock, without human intervention they would probably be wiped out.

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dv_dt 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If humans didn't manage risks to livestock on an industry scale they would be at risk. It requires a constant investment from both commercial industry and government. Activities like the dept of agriculture and university ag depts have been really so good at what they do. Its like the rest of civilization has forgotten what it takes and the costs involved if we neglect the investment. Agriculture and livestock is just one foundational civilization technology where we have forgotten the significance of

	▲	bombcar 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What is considered livestock varies over time - chickens range from "free range and can survive in the wild" to "so fat they can't live". One guess as to which is the most common by numbers - one reason that if you do decide to have a backyard flock, go with something "more natural". More dangerous in all these is the monoculture - a hundred years ago we would have a wide range of crops and livestock; now 90% of meat chickens are probably the same genetically; similar with cows and bananas and corn and rice and pigs, etc. That sets us up for a "wipe out 90% of chickens" risk.

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neonnoodle 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“Breeding more” bees is not as trivial as raising other animals, because bee reproduction depends on hive stability. Other animals are kept fully enclosed in captivity and can be artificially inseminated in some cases. Bees are semi-wild and have to be free to leave the hive to forage, and if they don’t return or if the hive collapses, you can’t “breed more.”

	▲	eszed an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Fun fact: queen bees can be artificially inseminated, and most commercial queens are. Beekeepers prefer naturally-inseminated queens, because they're stronger, but "nature" can't keep up with commercial demand. You're correct about "breeding more" not being trivial, but they do it on an industrial scale. In really broad strokes: in late winter, in preparation for pollination season, they feed their hives intensively (with sugar syrup) and add extra brood boxes for the queens to fill with eggs. Then they split the hives, leaving the old queen in one box, and adding new queens to the box(es) they take off. Voila! Double (or more) the hives. Pollination is where commercial beekeepers earn their living, by renting out hives of bees to farmers. Honey production is not necessarily an afterthought, even though it doesn't really turn a profit - it's worth doing because you'll be putting the bees on nectar flows for the summer, anyway, so you won't have to feed them, and extracting (some of) the honey covers transportation costs - but all the money's in pollination. I could keep going and going - queen production and hive splitting are fascinating topics on their own - but I'll stop before I risk boring people with an over-long comment. I have commercial beekeepers in my family, and I've worked (summer / vacation jobs, when I was a kid) every part of the process. (This is all in a USA-ag context. Beekeeping is - very! - different in other parts of the world.)