disappearing. The boygeorgias like the ol' global warming trick: pick a starting date which gives a phony impression of normality and then take the measurements from that time to show how the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket.
In the horror show, "We're doomed! Honeybees are becoming extinct!" the starting date is 1946. Why 1946? There was a big demand for honey to substitute rationed sugar. And beeswax was useful in the manufacture of ammunition. So, there was a surge in the numbers of hives to meet the demand. The downward trend in hives since then it mostly from dropping demand. Sometimes hives and colonies are lost from natural causes but that is not unusual. Changing numbers in the wild are even greater but that, too, is normal.
So, if you read another boygeorgia's (hur hur hur) panicked warning about the impending demise of the honeybee remember he is just trying to scare you with more lies. And that Einstein quote about how we all will be extinct in four years if all the bees disappear: it's fake, too.
http://beebusters.com/resurging-bees/