Whither the Honey Bee?

For the fourth consecutive year, roughly one-third of managed honey bees died last winter. 

This past winter, about 30 percent of all the managed honeybees in the US died. That's according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Such a die-off is no longer unusual. About a third of honeybees have perished every winter since 2006.

Given that recent history, USDA entomologist Jeff Pettis characterized this as quote "marginally encouraging" given that quote "the problem does not appear to be getting worse."

Of course, the problem has been getting worse since at least the 1980s, when parasitic mites first invaded the U.S. Our friend Apis mellifera has never recovered. Now so-called "Colony Collapse Disorder" or CCD continues to kill bees--who provide some $15 billion worth of economic good via pollination and other efforts.