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First, wild honeybees were not eradicated by Varroa. There are many papers written and researchers who have studied substantial wild honeybee populations for decades, and chronicled their decline and resurgence to pre-Varroa numbers. What has happened over the last few decades is that wild North American bees have adapted and are thriving, while 'babied' commercial bees are struggling.

Second, the number of commercial bee colonies for pollination services is not declining because beekeepers can choose to focus on making more when they need to. A reliably-consistent number of colonies can exist whether 5% die out every year or 50% (although at different cost). Having said that, what IS declining is the annual survival rate of colonies, which is linked to many factors, of which pesticides likely play a part. This is a not-so-subtle difference. Just because it doesn't immediately threaten commercial pollination doesn't mean there is no issue.



You just wrote a comment that essentially says there's no issue. Wild North American bees† are thriving. Commercial bees are "struggling". But they're not struggling in any way we can measure, since prices for bee-driven services aren't changing.

If neither commercial pollination nor wild populations are threatened, why is this a top-of-mind issue? My contention: for the same reason glyphosate is. These are cosmetic problems that are easy for us to talk about and assign blame for, without confronting the thorny systemic issues that really implicate out way of live.

Presumably you either mean invasive feral honey bee colonies, since honey bees don't belong here, or native bee species like the Bombus bees, which aren't exploited at scale in agriculture.




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