Aizen and Harder have consistently made the case, with which I agree, that changes in global pollination resources are based more on economic factors than anything else. With rising fees for pollination and increased demand for honey, colony numbers go up. The reverse is also true. Of course, the alarmist ignore analyses of this type.

> We argue that although disease aggravates production costs, it has less effect on changes in national hive numbers than labor costs, so that geographic variation in the growth of the global honey bee stock reflects the global division of human labor that is a hallmark of economic globalization, rather than persistent and pervasive biological causes. 

> Data compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) document a 45% increase in the global stock of domesticated honey bees during the last five decades.

> Aizen and Harder suggested that the economics of the global honey industry influence international dynamics of stocks of managed honey bees more strongly than biological problems.

> Although our analysis of international variation finds little evidence that disease strongly affects changes in honey-bee stocks, it is consistent with the important contribution of economic globalization and protectionism to both the positive global trend and spatial variation in the growth of the global stock of domesticated honey bees. 

Aizen, M. A., & Harder, L. D. (2009). Geographic variation in the growth of domesticated honey bee stocks: disease or economics?. Communicative & integrative biology, 2(6), 464.

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