Does anyone think these colony numbers are accurate enough to mean much? I am not so sure we even know how many commercial hives there are. If 1.5 million hives go to almonds that sets the lower limit for commercial hives. We all know a bunch of commercials do not go to almonds. Someplace more like 2.0 million seems closer to the truth. Or is the number in almonds considerably below 1.5 million?
Hobby hives are another story. I live in Ohio where we are supposed to register every apiary. I live on a road that is two miles long. Last year on my road there were 12 hives registered. Those were mine. The other 12 were not registered and not counted althou both sites are so close to the road as to be plainly visible. In my county about 35 apiaries were registered last year. That many people attend the local bee club some meetings. I have heard estimates of as many as 150 bee keepers in the county. At least in Ohio I think you could easy double or triple the number of hobby hives reported and be more accurate than the official figures.
Another couple of hints that perhaps the official numbers are low are the number of packages and the number of queens sold each year. Both of those numbers seem too big for only 2.8 million total hives. Not everyone replaces losses by buying a new package with a new queen.
Is the total number really more like 3.5 million hives? More?
Dick
" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner." Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists. "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong." H. L. Mencken
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