[Ratufa]

Active hives have increased because beekeepers have reacted to the increase in bee die-offs by splitting hives and otherwise increasing the number of hives they have. This causes an increase in demand for queens, and companies that sell queens will have more hives in order to meet that demand. Also, simple economic growth is a possible contributor to the increase in number of hives.

[tptacek]

Do I properly understand your argument, like the one below, to be that despite the increase in beehives, there are fewer live bees in the US?

[Ratufa]

When you talk about "increase in beehives", are you referring to hives that are managed by a beekeeper, or hives created by wild bees, and not managed by a human? When you talk about "fewer live bees", are you referring to wild bees, or bees in a managed hive? In my previous post, I was only referring to managed hives.

[tptacek]

There are no feral honeybees in the US. They were wiped out, not by neonics, but by the varroa mite, 30 years ago.

(Before we colonized this place, there were no wild honeybees: they're an introduced species).

Honeybees are livestock, not wildlife.

[ameliaikeda]

As an amateur beekeeper, I can tell you that honeybees _are_ wild, in a sense. A captured swarm is just a wild colony with the queen trapped in an excluder box in your hive.

They can't be domesticated, and containing them after they swarm involves tricking the bees into thinking they are the ones making a decision (you can turn their hive 90 degrees after they swarm in summer and they will return in most cases, assuming they've found a new spot for a hive).

Also, mites (and foul brood) are still a pain in the ass and I can see why bees need a beekeeper to even stand a chance.

[tptacek]

I did a little more clicking around, and learned (wait for it) that native feral honeybees are probably gone in the UK as well. Honeybees in both the UK and North America are livestock, not wildlife.

[jly]

Honeybees are indeed a non-native species to the US, but that doesn't mean there are not feral honeybees. They can survive just fine in the wild without us, as they did before they were domesticated, and they continue to do so as descendants of domesticated apis melifera and other species. This is the same as the wild boar which has existed in a feral state for centuries in the southern US, originally from domesticated pigs brought from Europeans. Calling apis melifera 'not wildlife' does not seem anywhere near accurate.

[jly]

No feral honeybees? I can attest from personal experience down here in Texas there are a lot of wild apis melifera and many other honey bee species doing just fine without us. Maybe your definition of 'feral' isn't the same as mine, but this is plain wrong.