The author is actually expliciting stating "Yep, there is an increase in bee deaths but the total number of bees is substantially higher so the supposed negative effect of these increased deaths is overstated or wrong" I don't think that's dodgy.
[1] the author is claiming that the number of colonies of domesticated bees is higher (not the number of bees),
[2] the author ignores non-domesticated bees and thus misses a significant economic contributor that matters for agricultural pollination, if not honey.
It's particularly dodgy because you're an example of a reader who came away thinking, "But there's more bees so that's good!" That's a false conclusion, the blame for which I lay partly at the feet of this author.
If it's actually the case that you're spending more just to maintain the same conversion because you're losing customers at a higher rate, that indicates something is wrong.