I notice that honey yields started to drop right when varroa started to be a problem.  We have known for a long time  that honey yields were a direct exponential function of how strong the hive is.  Even small effects from mites could easy result in lower honey yields.  Also, half of all hives are owned by commercial beekeepers.  I know commercial guys who split so aggressively they never have strong hives that would produce lots of extra honey to harvest.  Those guys are pollinators and today view excess honey as a real pain in the posterior as it runs their labor costs up pulling it a frame at a time from one story pollination hives to give the queen space to lay.
Also Bee Culture shows something like 75% of the honey sold in the US is domestic.  If this is true and we doubled honey production we would be swimming in the stuff and prices would be at give away just to get rid of it.  All in all it looks to me like US honey production is about where it should be or perhaps even a tad higher than it should rationally should be for the maximum good of the industry.
In spite of all the griping about foreign fake honey flooding the US market the latest study I have seen showed, based on analytical results from honey purchased in retail stores, that store bought honey was pure honey the vast majority of the time.  So, maybe those claims about foreign fake honey are fake news?
Dick 

Dick

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