Reason for production going up and bees going down is simple. Most of
the heavy losses were last year and with hobby beekeepers. In Maine, we
had reports of decreased or no honeybees in gardens which seems to
indicate a reduction in feral bees, local beekeepers or both. But a
record number of hives came into the state for pollination- about
50,000. And they also pollinated more blueberry and cranberry fields. So
you can have both a reduction in the number of bees (hobby beekeeper's
and feral bees) but crop production records because of increases in
numbers of hives used for pollination (about 10% in Maine) and acres of
crops pollinated- especially cranberries. It is interesting that pumpkin
and squash growers suffered greatly last year in more states than Maine,
and they don't always use commercial pollinators. But it might have been
the weather.
The press just grouped hobby and commercial beekeepers along with feral
bees into the same bag. Our commercial beekeepers did not suffer the
same kind of losses hobbiests did the 95-96 winter.
For the press, two out of three ain't bad.
Bill Truesdell
Bath, ME
 
Andy Nachbar wrote:
>
>      Honeybees and beekeepers acknowledged as responsible for
>      bumper crops of cranberries, ($1,400,000,000,000.00 or 1.4
>      billion $$)in areas reported by others as having lost 90% of
>      the bee populations? Check it out on the ABC News web page
>      below.
>
>      What ever your slant on the hype and misinformation still
>      being passed like the wind on the reported the loss of all
>      feral bees and much of the hive bee populations the facts
>      seem to be the effect on agriculture has been limited as the
>      1997 crop reports come in for the year and all the bee,
>      honeybee,(feral and hive) pollinated crops report record
>      yields with Cranberries taking the dollar lead from the 1996
>      and 1997 billion dollar California almond crop.
>
>      http://www.abcnews.com/sections/business/harvest/harvest_cran.html
>
> ttul, the OLD Drone