There are many hundreds of species of
bees, wasps, flies, and other insects which engage in pollination in the
course of feeding, just like honeybees. In areas where there is enough general
biodiversity and some wild
land, the lack of honeybees might hardly be noticeable in the yields of fruit and other things which depend on pollinators. The problem comes with vast monocultures, which often have a brief period of blooming, and are then devoid of providing bees of any sort with a food source at other times of the year. Honeybees live in large colonies and the conventional practice has been to truck hives in on
pallets and set them out there for the flowering season, and then move them to the next place. So a problem with honeybee populations, while detrimental to beekeeping, will actually impact large commercial farms much more severely than small growers.
