U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high
There's a little bit of dodging going around in this article... What's really going on is we still have a high amount of churn in the funnel, we're just spending more to hide it.> "The 2014 numbers, which came out earlier this year, show that the number of managed colonies -- that is, commercial honey-producing bee colonies managed by human beekeepers -- is now the highest it's been in 20 years."So the absolute numbers are up, great, but that did not come for free:> "The average retail price of honey has roughly doubled since 2006"Or, put in startup lingo, the churn is still high, but we're just hiding it by paying more to acquire a larger number of bees. CCD is still killing off bees, but we're just spending more to compensate.This is the dodgeyness: any good HN reader knows that it's your churn that kills your finances in the end.And that's where the insanity lies: I believe that CCD has basically been conclusively traced to a certain class of pesticides...  what sounds insane to me is we have created a toxic environment that has increased the leaking in the boat, but it's okay because we can just spend more money on bigger bilge pumps instead of addressing the underlying cause of the leak.