The number of U.S. bee colonies has remained relatively stable and has even slightly increased over the two decades since neonicotinoid pesticides ("neonics") were introduced in 1993.

See No Simple Answer to Bee Issues Exists: The causes and the solutions to bees' problems are complex and multiple by Henry I. Miller, M.D. of the Hoover Institution. 

"Jennifer Sass's comments about my op-ed "The Buzz About a Bee-pocalypse Is a Honey Trap" are misguided and misleading (Letters, Aug. 6). Although the number of U.S. honey bee colonies has fallen from a World War II peak of about five million to around 2.5 million today, the number of U.S. bee colonies has remained relatively stable and has even slightly increased over the two decades since neonicotinoid pesticides ("neonics") were introduced in 1993. 

The pre-1990s declines were due to three main factors: the end of price supports for honey as a wartime sugar substitute; imports of cheap honey, especially from China, that displaced U.S. supplies; and the arrival of Varroa parasitic mites in the 1980s. All of this occurred before neonics were introduced. 

The elevated levels of over-winter bee losses mentioned by Ms. Sass impose additional effort and cost on beekeepers, but bee scientists at USDA and elsewhere ascribe them to a complex of multiple factors, as I described—not solely or primarily to pesticides—and the losses are quickly made up in the early weeks of spring, as bees begin to breed and forage. 

Ms. Sass is correct that hive rental fees for almond pollination rose from 2003-2009, but that reflects not "high loss rates" but a huge increase in California's almond acreage with a concomitant demand for pollinators. 

The causes and the solutions to bees' problems are complex and multiple. Misguided anti-pesticide ideologues only promulgate confusion."