Charlie writes:
> What was done .. was to trap bees in a few tiny locations.   A quick snapshot.  The trapping was IMO not acceptable. 

Agreed. In fact, they cite an important prior work, but do not heed its recommendations. 

Attempts to detect declines in the abundances of
other animal species suggest that interannual variability
in abundance is so high that for most species it might
take as much as 20 years of monitoring to detect a mean
decline of 2%/year. As a result, populations may be reduced
by almost 50% before evidence for a decline could be detected

Although identifying bees
to species provides important data on the distribution,
relative abundance, and, over long periods, the changes
in individual species, it is time-consuming and only a
limited number of specialists currently have the ability
to correctly identify species.

We estimated that
a monitoring program with 200–250 sampling locations each sampled twice over 5 years would provide
sufficient power to detect small (2–5%) annual declines in the number of species and in total abundance and
would cost U.S.$2,000,000. To detect declines as small as 1% annually over the same period would require
>300 sampling locations

* However, this team falls prey to the same mirage that the others do:

Recently there has been considerable concern about 
declines in bee communities in agricultural
and natural habitats. The value of pollination to agriculture, 
provided primarily by bees, is >$200 billion/year
worldwide ... However, no monitoring program exists
to accurately detect declines in abundance of insect pollinators; 
thus, it is difficult to quantify the status of bee
communities or estimate the extent of declines.

Regional, national, or international
monitoring programs could therefore underpin an
early-warning system or document whether declines are
occurring. Such programs would allow for mitigation of
pollinator losses and avoid the financial and nutritional
crisis that would result if there were an unforeseen and
rapid collapse of pollinator communities.

* Again with scare tactics like "financial and nutritional crisis" -- presumably in order to justify spending more than $2 million to count insects. The real problem is justifying protected status and prioritizing it on the basis of financial benefit. This is the wrong approach. Ecosystems need to be valued for what they are, not what they provide. 

* Many ecologists have the mistaken notion that the best way to protect rare and endangered species is by eradicating common and non-native ones, whereas a more hands-off approach to natural resources has been shown to be extremely successful. That is, leave nature alone and she can repair the damage we have done. Some degree of faith may be required here, but backed up by 4 billion years of evolutionary evidence.

PLB 

SOURCE:
Lebuhn, G., Droege, S., Connor, E. F., Gemmill‐Herren, B., Potts, S. G., Minckley, R. L., ... & Cane, J. (2013). Detecting insect pollinator declines on regional and global scales. Conservation Biology, 27(1), 113-120.

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