Honey Bee Facts and Feats

Honey bees are flying insects, and close relatives of wasps and ants. They are found on every continent on earth, except for Antarctica. Honeybees are social insects that live in colonies. The hive population consists of a single queen, a few hundred drones, and thousands of worker bees.

Honey Bee Facts

• Honey bees must visit some 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey.
• Honey bees fly about 55,000 miles to bring in enough nectar to make one pound of honey.
• About one ounce of honey would fuel a honey bee’s flight around the world.
• Honey bees have been producing honey from flowering plants for about 10-20 million years.
• The average honey bee worker makes 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
• Honey bees contribute 8 to 10 billion dollars to the U.S. economy yearly.
• Honey bees have four wings that are latched into pairs by hooks.
• There are an estimated 200,000 beekeepers in the United States.
• Honey bees are the only insects that produce food for humans.
• The male honey bee, the drone, has a grandfather but no father.
• The average honey bee flies between 12 and 15 miles per hour.
• A honey bee flaps its wings about 12,000 times per minute.
• A honey bee worker visits more than 2,000 flowers on a good day.
• Honey bees communicate with one another by smell and dances.
• The average summertime honey bee lives only about 28 to 35 days.
• There are 3 million plus honey-producing colonies in the United States.
• A honey bee visits between 50 and 100 flowers during one collection trip.
• A typical healthy hive may contain up to 60,000 honey bees during peak times.
• Honey bees make an average of 1,600 round trips in order to produce one ounce of honey.
• Bees will travel as far as one or two miles from the hive to gather nectar.
• Honey bees from a typical hive visit approximately 225,000 flowers per day.
• Queen bees will lay as many as 2,000 eggs on a good day — an average of one every 45 seconds.
• A good queen bee will lay between 175,000 and 200,000 eggs per year.
• The average central temperature of the brood nest is kept between 92 – 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Beeswax production in most hives is only about 1.5% to 2.0% of the honey yield.
• Approximately eight pounds of honey is eaten by bees to produce one pound of beeswax.
• The Americas have no native honey bees — early pioneers first brought them from Europe.
• Honey bees pollinate approximately 25% of all the foods humans consume.
• Besides honey, honey bees produce wax and propolis, gather pollen, and produce royal jelly.
• A typical foraging honey bee will work herself to death in about three weeks