A Single Teaspoon of Honey Represents the Life's Work of 12 Bees

Next time you drizzle honey in your tea, consider this: it takes the lifetime work of approximately 12 bees to produce just one teaspoon (5ml) of honey. Each worker bee produces only about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her entire 6-week lifetime.

To make one pound of honey, bees must visit approximately 2 million flowers and fly a combined distance of about 55,000 miles — more than twice the circumference of the Earth. A typical hive produces about 60 pounds of honey annually. The bees themselves consume most of it to survive winter. This is why beekeepers can only harvest a surplus — taking too much honey endangers the hive.