> What has all the money spent on research actually accomplished of practical value in  the past decade or two?

See the summary published in 2019 of what at least two members of the state and federal-funded research community thought was worthy of note.

Work at this level goes slowly, because (a) it is almost impossible to get good data about honey bees in short periods (b) many of the most important questions are answered only over a multi-year period, and (c) funding for something that will take multiple years is incredibly difficult to get, and when obtained is often cut or eliminated for subsequent years.  The recent pandemic also had significant impact, as many facilities closed outright.  (FYI, bee research was not the only scientific casualty of the pandemic - due to travel restrictions NSF imposed, multiple long-term studies were unable to continue to collect a steady uninterrupted flow of data about flora and fauna, which forced some Antarctic projects to be abandoned after multiple successful years of data collection at great difficulty, and high cost.)

But despite these restrictions that affect university and federal work, we get new announcements of success in every month's ABJ from a small number of beekeepers engaging in their own research, some self-funded, some "crowdfunded".  The validity of such short-term work is questioned at times, but the claims made are reassuring to beekeepers, who have been waiting for decades, and are still waiting for basic things, such as a reliable, scalable, and cost effective way to kill varroa, while leaving the bees unharmed.  I have described this process as akin to killing all the cats in the USA while not harming any dogs.  This leaves us with the question as to how a few beekeepers are able to exceed the output of multiple university and federal labs in terms of "publishable results".

Standing in the apiary, we get a lot of false hopes, and hear about a lot of "basic science" that lacks a clear practical application to the business of beekeeping.  But we get very few things that prove to be safe, effective, and practical in the hands of the beekeeper.

As I had to explain at least yearly to a bunch of suits - "If we knew what marketable products would result, or even if ANYTHING would result, it would not be called 'R&D' - it would be 'applications engineering'.  All I can do is offer a 1 in 20 chance of the bragging rights of a Nobel Prize in any one year, I can't promise anything more. I won't repeat the error of the guy who promised that the PicturePhone would be a big seller in the 1960s.  So, give me some more chips to go wager, and trust me to put the chips on the best opportunities that appear."

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