The population of bees is increasing nicely - from Science 2.0:
Bee Experts Challenge Environmental Claim That Wild Bees Are Near Extinction
Colony Collapse Disorder, the belief that honeybees, an important pollinator, are being killed off in droves, has been good for environmental fundraising but hasn't had a scientific foundation.
Nonetheless, it has persisted for 10 years despite data showing that periodic die-offs in bees are as common, and therefore predictable, as solar cycles and California droughts. From the time that records of bees were formally kept, there were reports of mass die-offs without explanation, a thousand years before pesticides even existed.
But pesticides are the moneymaker. Activists can't gather $1 billion per year complaining about nature, like parasites. Yet despite some short-term buzz, the arguments rang hollow. Targeted seed pesticides, like the neonicotinoids that replaced broad-spectrum spraying, were the go-to fundraising claim until it was shown that bees were not declining everywhere they were used. In places like Australia, they didn't decline at all, while in northern Europe bee numbers correlated better to land use changes. More bees died in truck accidents hauling around bees to places where they were supposedly in decline, and due to beekeeping amateurs not knowing what they were doing, than can be attributed to science.
Once it was revealed that honeybees were actually at a 20 year high, environmentalists wisely changed tack - they began to claim instead that wild bees were dying due to pesticides. This was smarter, because we can't actually count wild bees. There is not even a baseline. Of the 25,000 species of bees worldwide, only 7 even have hives in which they could be counted. If the only number is guesswork, then guess at a baseline and then use guesswork later to claim it has declined.
Speaking truth to power. Environmentalism is making a few people (Al Gore is the poster boy) and a few organizations very wealthy - all of this on the backs of the volunteers who think they are making a difference for the planet. They are not. They are just useful idiots helping the agenda of the 1%. The Gang Green.
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