Numbers and Statistics

Originally imported from Europe in the 17th century, honey bees are essential to maintaining food production in North America today. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they pollinate more than 100 U.S. crops and help provide one out of every three bites of food Americans eat. 

“If we didn’t have migratory commercial honey bees, our dinner would look a lot less colorful and diverse,” said Smart.

Honey bees have another sweet superpower: making honey. They live and work in highly collaborative, social colonies with a sole reproducing queen, and they make honey by storing nectar from flowering plants in their hives for use during food scarcities.

“The average honey bee colony will gather roughly 40 pounds of pollen and 265 pounds of nectar from the local environment every year,” Otto said. 

Despite their might, honey bees are in trouble. The number of managed hives in the United States has decreased by about 50 percent since the 1950s due to factors such as diseases, parasites, habitat loss, pesticide exposure, and shifting markets and consumer demand for honey. In recent years, beekeepers have experienced an average total loss of 30 percent of colonies annually, and in 2013-2014 this number increased to 34 percent – a damaging sting.