Brian Fredericksen quoted:

> Commercial bees, which do most of the pollinating for a third of U.S.
crops, have declined during the past two decades to about 2.3 million
honey-producing colonies from about 3.5 million.

We have fallen farther than that:

> Back in beekeeping’s heyday — around the end of World War II when Uncle
Sam was teaching GIs to keep bees — there were nearly 5 million honeybee
colonies. But by the 1950s, the numbers began to plummet. Today, it’s
estimated that there are from 2 to 2.5 million colonies in the United
States. -- "Adventures in Beekeeping", Plenty Magazine, 2006-02-01

That was 2006; might be less by now.

pb 

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