Does anyone know the Carbon Footprint of a Beehive?

[rick42_98]

I have to believe it is a negative quantity.  It is built from wood, nails and beeswax foundation.  Even if you start with a package or a nuc you have a workforce of 50,000, give or take, which spend everyday pollinating, creating more green, creating seeds.  All that green uses photosynthesis which eats CO2 and emits O2.  Does anyone know?   :roll:

[AllenF]

Sounds like a good study/ (waste of money) government spending program.   Move over bovines, here comes the bees.

[Boom Buzz]

As beeks, would we receive carbon credits?   :-D

[AllenF]

Or would we only get carbon credits when we got rid of the bees to cut out the carbon?

[hardwood]

Are you factoring in all the shipping carbon for every new tool or isp control that is all the rage? 6-7 long distance deliveries per hobbyist sound about right.

Scott

[Hemlock]

Why do you want to know?  If it is a positive number would you get rid of your bees?

How many clear cuts to provide a nation's worth of wooden ware each year.
Have you ever seen what a zinc mine or an iron mine do to the environment. you use nails right?
How about all the chemicals needed to make paint & glue.
There's lots of hives with plastics in them and that's oil of course.  Which would include transportation.
Plus much more.

I don't see how bees can sequester carbon.  Maybe they're carbon neutral helping to produce 30% more food on existing acreage but I don't know.  If you think your bees are killing the planet then give them to me.  I'll swear on Al Gore that no Planets will be harmed in the production of my honey!

[David McLeod]

Hmmm, Al Gore and bees the possibilities are interesting.  :evil:

[Hemlock]

David McLeod ,

I like the way you think...

[AllenF]

[Scadsobees]

They sequester carbon in the form on honey, but then you eat and process that and it reenters the system, not to mention the amount of carbon produced from driving trucks around maintaining the hives.  They pollinate seeds, but those only replace the vegetation that will die in the fall.  They die and rot in the ground releasing methane. It is a zero sum game.

We all live and die by carbon.

I think it is an unanswerable academic question at best, a trick to fool people out of money as carbon credits at worst.

[FRAMEshift]

Good grief.  Gore never said he invented the internet from a technical point of view.  He said he helped create it politically and he actually did.  And later he was the main force pushing to open the internet to commercial use, which resulted in an explosion of uses which most people (other than Gore) had not foreseen. This forum is one of those uses.

And I don't get the climate change denials.  We are making lots of carbon... the physics of how that warms the atmosphere is not complicated, and the atmosphere IS warming.  It rarely gets any more obvious in a complex system like global climate. 

[Hemlock]

Then can I have your hives too... :evil:

[FRAMEshift]

Then can I have your hives too... :evil:

Nah.  My bees reduce carbon emissions because I have to stay home to take care of them.  That's less gasoline burned.   :-D    And God knows what trouble I would get into if I didn't spend so much time on the bee forums.... on the internet....invented by Al Gore.  Soooo.... I guess Gore has indirectly reduced my carbon emissions.    :-P

[Kathyp]

And I don't get the climate change denials.  We are making lots of carbon... the physics of how that warms the atmosphere is not complicated, and the atmosphere IS warming.  It rarely gets any more obvious in a complex system like global climate.  

good thing you weren't around at the end of the last ice age!  "oh nooooo, the ice is melting....put out your cook fires!"   :evil:

can someone tell me what the perfect temp for earth is?  i sure hope it's not the nasty cold summer we just had.  

[Hemlock]

Nah.  My bees reduce carbon emissions because I have to stay home to take care of them.

Awwwww.  I already had an apiary spot picked out too.  Over by the outdoor wood stove.  Well if you have to pick your car over your bees let me know OK. Thanks.  :-D

[Scadsobees]

We are making lots of carbon...

Check the science....we're not making any carbon.  :roll:

[FRAMEshift]

We are making lots of carbon...

Check the science....we're not making any carbon.  :roll:

What?  You've stopped exhaling?  :-D

[HomeBru]

We are making lots of carbon...

Check the science....we're not making any carbon.  :roll:

Smart Alek!

Carbon footprint is based upon how much carbon we are releasing from fossil fuels, carbon stored in the ground "millions" of years ago. Bees themselves are carbon neutral. Plastics, transportation, etc, not so much. Tough to quantify though!

I always tell my students (I teach Bio) that using paper and wood helps reduce our carbon footprint because it encourages the planting and harvest of fast growing tree species and helps remove carbon from the atmosphere...  :-D

J-

[Bee-Bop]

Bee's have 6 feet !

Does that mean they have 6 carbon foots ?     ;)

Bee-Bop

[HomeBru]

We are making lots of carbon...

Check the science....we're not making any carbon.  :roll:

What?  You've stopped exhaling?  :-D

We're not MAKING carbon, we're taking the carbon from Glucose and releasing it as Carbon Dioxide as a waste product of cellular respiration.

First law of Thermodynamics: Matter can be neither created nor destroyed.