>> My understanding is that feral honey bees have been extinct in North America for a long time (since the 1980s?), and that they're an introduced species. The

>> My understanding is that feral honey bees have been extinct in North America for a long time (since the 1980s?), and that they're an introduced species. The logic then goes: if you see a honey bee flying around outside, it at some point belonged to a honey bee keeper. I don't believe this is the case, meaning not all feral bees are escaped swarms, although many may be. See this for more (a lot more) information: http://scientificbeekeeping.com/whats-happening-to-the-bees-part-5-is-there-a-difference-between-domesticated-and-feral-bees/ http://scientificbeekeeping.com/whats-happening-to-the-bees-... >> I'm also of the impression that (a) the costs for pollination services haven't shot up in conjunction with colony collapse disorder (CCD), and that CCD is defined in terms of an increase in colonies that fail to overwinter. It's not, the logic goes, as if all the honey bee colonies fail; they just seem to be more fragile. I can't comment on the price of pollination services, but I don't believe CCD is defined solely as 'failing to overwinter', implying the bees starve or were otherwise ill prepared during a period of dearth. CCD is typically defined as a general failure of the hive in the presence of adequate environment, seen by absconding or dying off. Honeybees have been so well studied over the last 10 years or so with the advent of CCD that the phenomenon is much better understood. Many experts today believe it is caused by a combination of continually more unnatural beekeeping practices, for example the continued feeding of non-honey sugar sources, monoculture crops, chemicals used in agriculture, forcing the bees to reuse comb indefinitely, etc. >> There's also a market for queens to start new colonies with, and my understanding was that the market for these queens hasn't gotten crazy in response to CCD. I buy queens for non-commercial beekeeping and I haven't seen any observable difference in my area. They are not difficult to breed with adequate resources.