A lot of media noise is made of the so called bee die offs. Our local paper in Mpls recently ran a piece suggesting the neonics were causing not just hive losses but double the losses of a few years ago implying things are getting worse.

Here is some data. 

http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda
/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1191

USDA colonies (millions)

2011 2.499
2010 2.684
2009 2.498
2008 2.342
2007 2.442
2006 2.393  
2005 2.410
2004 2.556
2003 2.599
2002 2.574
2001 2.506
2000 2.634

I calculate a 15% spread or 340,000 hives in this data set I selected. Gee whiz we had almost the same number of colonies in 2000 as we did as recently as 2010! 

So we hear so much about the losses in the EU and neonics/GMO's etc, so I looked that up too. 

http://www.pollinator.org/PDFs/OPERAReport.pdf

page 23 figure 5 shows a significant increase in the number of hives since 2000. The report cites the high price of honey as a reason for the increased number of hives. 

I just don't see any data here that suggests an ongoing massive bee die off in the EU or United States. 

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