>
> >We were discussing it today.   I did assume you had looked at the data
> and were convinced it was a fair representation.


Thanks for that Charlie--I'm not in the habit of posting or publishing
anything that is not well checked and thought out.


>   > I wonder if the decline of late can be tied to the bee apocalypse and
> the number of hobby people being involved who may not be harvesting as much
> or as skilled??Just a thoughtCharles
>

"It is the mark of an educated man to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting or rejecting it."--Aristotle



I wasn't so much interested in the decline since 1998.  This thread started
out with the post:
*  "Same stuff usually seen from the Native Pollinator vs Honeybee
arguments,"*
the implication being that honey bees compete with native pollinators.  I
was addressing that thought only.

Look at the trend from 1940 until varroa took hold in the late '90s.
Despite less available forage (due to changing farming practices) there
appeared to be an inverse correlation between number of hives and per-hive
yield.  This is exactly what you'd see in any apiary.  My point was that it
appeared that 6 million hives results in enough competition for resources
to reduce honey yields.  This then has implications for competition between
honey bees and native pollinators.  That's all that I was attempting to get
across!

If you now wish to discuss what happened after 1998, the failure of
fluvalinate and coumaphos, the evolution of DWV and IAPV, plus the invasive
wave of *N. ceranae* all had an impact on colony health, resulting in what
was later termed "CCD," which started rearing its ugly head around 2003,
belatedly caught the attention of the presss in 2007, and went away around
2010 as the bees and beekeepers adapted.  Honey yields and colony counts
are again now starting to rise.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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