If that's the case, it seems like a mountain was made out of a mole hill in the media. I read multiple times that I may never eat a pollinated fruit or vegetable again.
""" Mr Ingraham---do not assume you can read a few papers on CCD and bees and make cogent, authoritative remarks in a newspaper piece----this piece fails miserably. I AM a beekeeper, in Los Angeles, using feral honey bees, making public presentations, teaching beekeeping and selling honey. I am going to fill in your ignorance here with a few salient points. Making splits causes a yield of TWO WEAK hives, which is not the same as having the vigorous, healthy original hive. And just so you know, the splits the commercial folks are making from the survivors of pesticide, fungicide, herbicide exposure on industrial crops are the already weakened colonies that happen to make it. So, the splits are not especially fated to thrive, either. Your little tables showing statistics does not tell the real story of the insults being suffered by ALL pollinators from monocrop, industrial agriculture. The typical Consumerist answer to a problem---"just buy more" bees and queens is not addressing the real problems which are decline in clean forage from toxic chemical exposure, lack of forage diversity, trucking bees all over the country, narrow in-bred genetics. The loss of all pollinators, as well as decline in overall ecosystem diversity from the same insults, is the REAL issue. Your piece is also old ground previously plowed over by that corporate apologist and booster at Forbes, Jon Entine, another geek behind a computer who writes about beekeeping with a singularly narrow and uniformed arrogance. Like your ballyhooed Tucker and Thurman, the "economists" (never far from pontificating for the beauties of the "free market") the people weighing in on the loss of pollinators and trying to urge us not to be concerned are akin to Climate Change denialists. """
This is also a beekeeper attempting to husband honey bees using feral bee populations, 98+% of which were annihilated by the varroa mite a long time ago (there are people who dispute whether "feral honey bees" really still exist at all in the US).
I'm not especially moved by arguments that attempt to tar people asking reasonable questions about insects to climate change denialists.
Just think about it. Consider tomatoes, a new world crop. How were they pollinated before the arrival of the european honey bee? The answer is they were pollinated by various north american pollinating insects, which has continued to this day. European honey bees are notable because they produce an especially large volume of honey which makes them a little more economically useful since they can contribute to two different revenue streams: honey and pollination services. Native american bees such as Melipona beecheii and Melipona yucatanica which produce honey produce it in smaller quantities. Both those species are domesticated and stingless and historically were kept as pets by native americans such as various Mayan tribes who used the honey, pollination for their own local use, and religious ceremonies. The reason they are not used in modern production is because of the quantity of honey, not because they can't produce it or don't pollinate.