>  lack of bees would threaten our food supply and that's never a good thing for stability. 

Excuse me, but this has never been demonstrated, never been proven. Most of the crops that require bees are specialty crops like almonds, apples, etc. Most of the almonds are exported. Meanwhile, we are already importing a great deal of our food. I estimate that one million colonies would be sufficient to pollinate the crops that require bees to be trucked in and there are likely three million colonies in the US. 

The number is increasing again, by the way, due to record high prices for honey and pollination. We heard the same thing back in the 1950s, when numbers fell from 6 million to 5 million. "If this continues, we won't have enough bees, etc." The number fell by half, and guess what happened: nothing. This sort of alarmist rhetoric does nothing but muddy the water. Honey bees are essential for quality domestic fruit, nuts and vegetables. Nobody is going to starve, bees are not going extinct.

PLB

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