It is important when giving statistical information that you let us know where your information came from, and how the data was gathered. Cite the name of the source (for example : The New York Times) and the credentials of the author or person interviewed. Then, give information about how the study was conducted itself, for example, does this information come from a survey of farmers? Or were the bees "tagged and tracked" by a scientist?
Also a few details such as: Are all of these statistics U.S. statistics or are some of them Worldwide findings? When you tell us that the West Coast has lost 60% of its population of bees, I'd like to know since when? Did we lose them all in one year, or was this a gradual loss that has occurred over ten years time?
Do you have any data that relates the loss of bees to defined loss of crops? Are there specific types of crops that have suffered more than others?
Why is the price of a bee colony higher? Is it simply because we have fewer bees, or are there other factors involved that have inflated the price, such as increased demand, increased costs of shipping or raw materials? Also, I'd love to know precisely what one recieves when buying a bee colony and who sells them? Have farmers needed to own a certain number of their own bee colonies to grow crops, or have they relied on nature to provide the bees? Is this changing? Are the farmers now buying their own private bee colonies to replace the lost bees that nature used to provide?
Answering these questions will help you to better understand the problem and to move towards generating ideas for possible solutions.
