Seeing's Bee-leaving?

(Left: AMERICAN Bumblebee; Right: EUROPEAN Honeybee: Whose bee-side bee YOU on?)
There is a very learned, fascinating, unorthodox, and plausible disquisition, with references, on the apparent decline and fall of (European) honeybee culture as agents of USer corporate, agricultural hegemony posted by 'bringiton' over at Corrente.
As with so much in the 'natural' world, evidently there is both more and less to the declining populations of (european) honey bees than may bee immediately obvious. You prob'ly noticed ours are fuzzy, and much cuter. They don't make wax or honey, though. In fact, none of the over 4000 indigenous species of bees makes honey or wax.
I did NOT know that!
Still, there have also been serious declines in native pollenators, too.