Colony Collapse Disorder Hysteria

Heard about this? It's been trumpeted everywhere that the honeybees are disappearing, and that mass starvation is going to be the result. Here is what wikipedia has to say, and they are fairly typical.

The phenomenon is particularly important for crops such as almond growing in California, where honey bees are the predominant pollinator and the crop value in 2006 was US$1.5 billion. In 2000, the total U.S. crop value that was wholly dependent on honey bee pollination was estimated to exceed US$15 billion.[73]
Honey bees are not native to the Americas, therefore their necessity as pollinators in the US is limited to strictly agricultural/ornamental uses, as no native plants require honey bee pollination, except where concentrated in monoculture situations—where the pollination need is so great at bloom time that pollinators must be concentrated beyond the capacity of native bees (with current technology).
They are responsible for pollination of approximately one third of the United States' crop species, including such species as: almonds, peaches, soybeans, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers and strawberries. Many but not all of these plants can be (and often are) pollinated by other insects in small holdings in the U.S., including other kinds of bees, but typically not on a commercial scale. While some farmers of a few kinds of native crops do bring in honey bees to help pollinate, none specifically need them, and when honey bees are absent from a region, there is a presumption that native pollinators may reclaim the niche, typically being better adapted to serve those plants (assuming that the plants normally occur in that specific area).
However, even though on a per-individual basis, many other species are actually more efficient at pollinating, on the 30% of crop types where honey bees are used, most native pollinators cannot be mass-utilized as easily or as effectively as honey bees—in many instances they will not visit the plants at all. Beehives can be moved from crop to crop as needed, and the bees will visit many plants in large numbers, compensating via sheer numbers for what they lack in efficiency. The commercial viability of these crops is therefore strongly tied to the beekeeping industry.

But while on vacation these past couple of weeks, I was in a field of flowers and noticed an awful lot of bumblebees. Not true bees, of course. They are actually hornets. But that is quite irrelevant to the matter at hand. I noticed that there were many more bumblebees than last year, in a place which had been hit by "colony collapse disorder."

That is when the thought hit me: this whole issue is a lie, and a scare tactic. It happens all the time, one animal being able to outcompete another. The hornets are moving in where the honeybees are not doing their jobs.

In fact, I even realized that the next thing that will be sold to fruit farmers will be colonies of hornets. Sure they are less valuable than honeybees - because they don't make honey, you see - but they pollinate every bit as aggressively. And the hornets are there, and not suffering from colony collapse. They can and will pollinate the fruit trees, and can be a replacement for honeybees. Fruit crops are not going to be lost after all.

Of course, I LIKE honey, so I hope the bees recover soon. In the meantime, who stands to gain from the scaremongering?