I miss the analogy. While generic honey can come from just any available flowers, better honey comes from flowers of predominantly one type. And, as often as not, these flowers are not from food crops, but just regional plants.
While beekeepers take advantage of moving their hives to pollinate crops, over time it seems to be destroying their industry. So specializing in either honey bees or pollinating bees seems to be a logical outgrowth.
Importantly, since the pollinating bees would not primarily be wanted for their honey, the flavor of their honey would not matter, so in the off season, they could be fed a nutritious mixture of food to keep them healthy and more active for when they were needed for pollination.
Meanwhile, the honey bees would regain their regional character, and be far more protected from diseases and parasites.
The root problem is monoculture. Before modern agriculture farms would raise a variety of crops, and something or other would be in bloom at all pretty much all year. That meant local bees were always productive and could maintain local hives.
Now when we have an entire valley of almonds (which by-the-way make terrible honey) one needs far more bees for a brief period than could survive year round between almonds blossoming.
It means cheaper almonds, cherries, melons, whatever than vest pocket sized plots of each, but it also makes us vulnerable to a crop disease wiping out an entire industry.
I don’t know how we gracefully back out of this.
Oh, bee keepers feed bees high fructose corn syrup during the off season as it is. Corn syrup. Made from GMO corn. Corn modified to make its own pesticide...