This article could have been written by your people at East Anglia who invented Global Warming. Pretty alarmist. The bees have real problems but as of now, it is just not that bad. Dr. Jerry Bromenshenks excuse spelling, of University of Montana and now his own company, finds that CCD results from vorroa mite vectored virus in conjunction with fungicides being present at CCD incidents.
The reason it takes most of the bees in the country to pollinate one crop, is that the almond plantation has reached gargantuan proportions! World demand is huge and they are being planted in the thousands of acres. They are grown in a desert monoculture where irrigation water to support plants that would provide habitat for natural pollinators is not available. So they need all the bees in the country. They come from the farthest reaches of the nation. Then the bees are all bunched together for easy mass transference of varroa borne virus and they use tons of fungicides on the almonds. The bees build up hugely on the almond nectar and pollen and a beekeeper gets the equivalent of a honey crop from the pollination fees. So the bees are often parked in marginal habitats and fed sugar, kept alive till the next pollination gig. It is not a simple problem but it is just not as desperate as the enflamed choom who wrote the article layed out.