Hi all

I recently obtained this paper:

Highland, Steven, and R. R. James. "The Similarity and Appropriate Usage of Three Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Datasets for Longitudinal Studies." Environmental Entomology (2016): nvv227.

In it they cite some interesting statistics. These numbers are obtained from the "Census of Agriculture - UNITED STATES DATA."
USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Colony numbers 

1987     2,835,043

1992     2,633,338

1997     2,518,962

2002     2,350,005

2007     2,902,732

2012     3,282,570


As you can easily see, their numbers indicate an increase of almost one million colonies from 2002 to 2012, and the current level is higher than pre-varroa. So much for the bee apocalypse?

PLB

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