A prof of economics and environmental studies writes:

"Reducing demand for honey will not help the threatened bee population. While some have noted that there are a few bee deaths that result from honey extraction — accidentally/unavoidably in the handling of frames, as well as the few colonies that were starved over winter because too much of their food reserve was removed — it should also be noted how many colonies are created* and maintained in order to meet the demand for honey.

Let’s walk through the economics of it:

If you reduced the demand for honey, this would reduce beekeepers’ supply of honey, which they would do by either keeping less bees, extracting less honey from them, and/or reducing their inputs to hives that enhance honey production.

It will also have a complicated impact on their supply of colonies for pollination: on one hand, some beekeepers might need to shift resources into pollination to make-up the lost income. On the other hand, many crops requiring pollination can yield (directly or indirectly) good honey production, meaning that if honey were in less demand, they might reduce their supply for bees for pollination (or need higher rental fees to compensate them).

And the story is even more complicated for almonds because while almond blossoms yield little nectar thereby resulting in bitter honey as was noted by Lauren Campbell, the pollination of almonds occurs so early in the season (February/March) that it actually works well in building up bee colonies.: most beekeepers find almond pollination (and the great boon of harvested pollen that comes with it) an excellent way to build up colonies with loads of protein for brood (i.e. baby bees) and that results in bigger/more* colonies later in the season when they can take advantage of excellent tasting honey crops like citrus and wildflowers.

So that bit about almond pollination resulting in bad honey is mostly incorrect because no beekeeper would solely rely on almonds for their honey supply.

HOWEVER (I told you it was complicated!): I wouldn’t go hoping that increasing demand for almonds would help the bees either because they already utilize nearly the entire population of bees in the U.S. for pollination services. In fact, the almond acreage over the last thirty years or so has doubled, leading to a much more migratory, pollination-oriented beekeeping industry. That may have contributed to a greater risk then in bees being exposed to whatever is causing Colony Collapse Disorder.
If we did the opposite, however—increase demand for honey—this would help beekeepers in a number of ways: it would provide an enhanced, stabilizing source of income, encourage them to maintain the health of their hives, and maybe even bring more beekeepers and bees* into the mix.

*How do you create bees, you ask? They do their thing, biologically, but you can give them conditions that help them bulk up numbers. And you can split a colony: encouraging/letting them create a new queen and then taking that queen and a few frames of worker bees and putting them into a whole new colony, thereby creating two colonies where there was one. (The new and old queens then have to get to work to create/replace new/lost bees but you get the idea).

Also, this is to say nothing of all of the other kinds of bees (honey bees are only 7 of the over 15,000 bee species in the world!) such as bumble bees, carpenter bees, etc. Most of these bees live in the ground or trees and do not make honey at all. Many of these “wild” bee populations are also in decline. Reducing or increasing demand for honey will do next to nothing for them.

Hope this helps."

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Posted By: jampersands, Jun 17, 17:17:26