>
> > the question should not be whats the decline,  but what was the rise?
>

I thought that was obviously my point--I guess that I should have spelled
it out more carefully!

Per-colony honey production steadily rose from the 1940s "til around 1999,
when varroa and *N. ceranae* exerted their impact upon the managed bee
population.

I had planned to overlay hives numbers, but have misplaced that file.  So
I've now added them for a scattering of years (the white squares).  As one
can see, as colony numbers across the US declined, honey yields went
up--similar to as what would occur in any individual apiary.  Beekeepers
didn't get any better at producing honey--they already knew how to do that
by the 1860s.

One could thus argue that the US was overstocked with bee hives in the
1940s, resulting in overall lower per-hive honey yields, and that yields
improved (despite there being less actual forage) as the number of hives on
the land declined.

​
 > One cannot assume that the same method for calculating average yield
persisted for that many decades.

I'm under the impression that they used the same math--the total reported
honey yield, divided by the reported number of honey-producing hives.
Pete, do you have reason to assume that NASS changed their calculation
methods consistently over time?

 >If honey production stays flat and the number of colonies declines, you
will see the average rise. But the method of counting colonies changed at
the time the average production began to spike. Smells fishy to me.

Pete, it may smell fishy to you because it sounds as though you are
fishing!  Yes, the method of counting colonies changed in 1986, when NASS
began collecting data for only apiaries of more than 5 hives.  But they
collected honey data only for the same apiaries, so by my math that
wouldn't change the yield per colony appreciably.  Please correct me if I'm
making any wrong assumptions.


>
>

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

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