SE Pennsylvania, where I live, hasn't had any wild honey bees for years. I think commercial apple growers would be in trouble if it weren't for domesticated hives. However, my garden and fruit trees are doing spectacularly well. Bumblebees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and at least two species of bee/wasp-like critters I don't recognize have stepped in to snap up the pollen the honeybees no longer take.

I don't mean to minimize the loss of honeybees, but nature does adapt (not always to our liking, of course).

The situation is particularly dire this year in Switzerland, England, Germany and France. When I visited isolated New Zealand last year they were reporting their first die-offs there too. The beekeepers here in Europe are pretty sure where the problem is coming from:

Die-Off Hits German Hives

Germany's beekeepers were pointing fingers at one of Germany's largest companies, blaming a popular, recently-introduced pesticide called clothianidin for the recent die-off. Produced by Monheim-based Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of German chemical giant Bayer AG, clothianidin is sold in Europe under the trade name Poncho. It's designed to attack the nervous systems of insects "like nerve gas," says Hederer. The chemical was used last year to fight an outbreak of corn rootworm, and its success against the pest led to a much wider application this spring up and down the Rhine.

That's right, Bayer, the same company that brought you heroin is distributing the neurotoxin clothianidin into the biosphere in products such as Gaucho 600. The chemical is a highly toxic nicotinoid (PDF).

Read what Bayer has done to try prevent the news getting out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid_effects_on_bee_population

"How is it conceivable that all our lauded technological progress -our very civilisation- is like the axe in the hand of a pathological criminal?" - Albert Einstein

Here in the USA beekeepers have responded by using the natural abilities of bees to propagate,with a well established Queen-rearing industry

I can multiply my bees by using a number of techniques,Hive splits,making "nucs"[nucleus hives]natural swarm capture ect.Upwards to 250% increase possible.

What hurts is winterkill...sometimes 30-80%.A lot of beekeepers are thinking a variation of Nosema is responsible for colony-collapse ,some believe pesticide use is the culprit,some that GMO corn....beekeeping is a art form in some ways.The trick now is to keep them alive{I am up to 40 hives now}