I think Jerry hit all the points of beekeeping.You have to love the work for whatever reason to do it,it's to hard and to many negatives to do it for the money.
 You'd be about as safe ,or maybe more going to vegas with your money. The only thing ,the problems seem to cycle around from different operations each year. 
 I have a friend locally here that has not had problem one since ccd started,he's got pallets from recent dead outs for more than 800 hives,out of about 1400, he expanded while we from the original ccd fought back out of the hole,bought bees ,split there guts out.
 While some have expanded,others are and have lost.If you look at the overal hive numbers,it's going down each year,so I don't think the big outfits can take up the slack in reality when it comes to the bottom line.
   The things which work for you last year,won't work this year in alot of cases, but for the big outfits,and pollination cash flow,pouring money into feed and queens is a big plus.

  

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