Bob Harrison Wrote: 
> I believe in the U.S. every year since 1946 the number of beekeepers has 
> declined ( except for possibly one year). 

Have a look at:

http://www.airborne.co.nz/usstats.html

and compare to other major producing countries.

I need to update these!

The general hypothesis has to be: high labour cost (closely 
associated with high GDP per capita) equals high operating cost per 
beehive leading to uneconomic beekeeping if income (mostly honey and 
pollination fees) does not increase to match.  

A very general observation.......
Countries with high labour content have decreasing hive numbers.
Countries with low labour content have increasing hive numbers.

Regards,
Peter Bray_________________________________________________________
Airborne Honey Ltd., Pennington St, PO Box 28, Leeston, 
New Zealand Fax 64-3-324-3236,  Phone 64-3-324-3569  
http://www.airborne.co.nz  [log in to unmask]

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