If everyone stopped eating honey and commercial beekeeping ceased to exist, how much would this impact crop pollination? How much would wild bees pick up the slack?
[Question] How would crop pollination work without commercial beekeeping?
Hmm, if everybody stopped eating honey and wild bees are not picking up the slack, then presumably farmers would instead pay for commercial beekeeping to pollinate their fields?
Beekeepers in the U.S. earn about half their revenue from pollination services so even if demand for honey were reduced, commercial crop pollination would not cease (though it would probably get more expensive). I discuss ways to reduce demand for managed honey bee pollination here, including self-fertile varieties of pollinator-dependent crops, mechanical pollination, and local wild pollination.