The honey bee is used for crop pollination and honey production and is considered agricultural livestock. As such honey bees are critical to our economy. But the business of honey bees is more than pollination and honey. Current data indicates the US honey industry is evolving into the pollination and bee industry. Small operations, even though there are thousands of them, coupled with many more thousands of backyard beekeeping hobby beekeepers are producing very little honey in the scheme of things. And those beekeepers with thousands of colonies, though still making a mark in the amount of honey consumed here, are obviously focusing on producing bees – for their own use in pollination, and for other beekeepers, whether large or small for replacements, or for the smaller operations in the form of packages or nucs for starters, replacers or growth. It is a slow evolution because keeping bees without making honey is, in many instances, difficult to do – bees make honey, that is what they do. So, some is produced that can’t be recycled back into food for bees. But the labor cost of harvesting, extracting, and dealing with this product, at less than $2.00 and often less than a buck a pound is becoming a financial drain. Bees, or pollination. That, it seems, is becoming the name of the game.”