Hi all I recently obtained this paper: Highland, Steven, and R. R. James. "The Similarity and Appropriate Usage of Three Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Datasets for Longitudinal Studies." Environmental Entomology (2016): nvv227. In it they cite some interesting statistics. These numbers are obtained from the "Census of Agriculture - UNITED STATES DATA." USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service. Colony numbers 1987 2,835,043 1992 2,633,338 1997 2,518,962 2002 2,350,005 2007 2,902,732 2012 3,282,570 As you can easily see, their numbers indicate an increase of almost one million colonies from 2002 to 2012, and the current level is higher than pre-varroa. So much for the bee apocalypse? PLB *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html