[Jamestown1630]

I was thinking about that last night.

There are lots of pollinators besides the communal bees; but the latter are essential to many of our food plants. When we were going through the worst of colony collapse, I wondered if anyone was studying the idea of some kind of technology to help pollinate the bee-assisted plants. (I was imagining little, delicately operating robots or drones :-)

This is an interesting article:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d7ezaq/what-would-happen-if-all-the-bees-died-tomorrow

[heartwood]

I have ants pollinating my peaches and blueberries.

Also carpenter bees and miner bees. Wasps and small flower bees are abundant later.

If honeybees grow to a natural size, either wild or on natural size comb, they do better at grooming and removing mites. Most commercial frame comb is a little larger than natural. Or so I have read.