Comment Why commercial hives are collapsing (Score 1) 88
There are a few pollination events that draw hives in from the entire US; bees are loaded on semi trucks from all over the country and sent to california for the almond pollination. The almond crop represents a very large part of all commercial bee keepers revenue from the year.
but this also exposes billions of bees to billions to other bees, so if there is a parasite, bacteria, virus or anything else that can be transmitted from hive to hive it's a huge exposure event for virtually the nations entire bee swarm.
this is exacerbated by "package" sales, where bees are vacuumed up in 3 or 4lb packages, an unrelated queen is put into the package, and the whole thing is sold to bee keepers all over the country to start new hives with.
We have similar issues with all of our domestic livestock; pigs, chickens, cows, sheep - biosecurity is a thing for bees, too.