Over 750 Busy Bees Give Life to Making Honey

Facts About the Source of Honey and Beeswax

The average honey bee lifespan is only a little over 40 days. During those precious 40 days, one worker bee produces about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey, which is equal to 0.6 grams, or .021 ounces of honey.  In fact, more than 750 bees combined will work their entire life to produce 1 lb of honey. 

In producing the 1 lb of honey, the busy bees in the bee hive will have traveled more than 55,000 miles-- the equivalent of flying around the world one and a half times.  

At the same time, it takes the bees making 6 lbs of honey to produce 1 lb of beeswax that will be used to make other products.  So the combined efforts of over 4,500 bees will take them an entire life time to produce 1 lb of beeswax.

The average queen bee, however, can live upwards of five years, and during that time she will produce more than 2,000 eggs a day, or almost ¾ of a million bees a year.  The male bee, lives an incredibly short time, mating with the queen and giving up his life in the process.  The majority of the bees are sterile female worker bees, who carry out the vast majority of the real work done in and by the hive. 

Each worker bee evolves in their skills, going from cleaning their own birth chamber, to taking care of the newer bees, to guarding the hive, to finally spending the last 20-25 days of their lives, collecting the pollen and nectar necessary to produce the honey and bees wax we are accustomed to.

Did you know, that the Romans so valued honey, that it was considered legal tender for paying taxes in Rome!  Now that is someone that respects the work and value this tiny insect brings. Imagine paying your US taxes in honey. That would surely create a sticky but sweet treasury. Perhaps our tax money would not fly out the door as fast as it seems to, if the government was required to measure expenditures.

A lot of busy bee work goes into producing the bee products we carry. The bee’s work is at the heart of our products and is so essential to our lives, including pesticide free raw honey, produced by a bee keeper with citrus groves in Vero Beach, Florida, apple orchards in the upper state New York, and over 2,000 bee hives, using organic procedures to make their honey pesticide free—hand creams, lip balms, furniture polishes, and insect repellants produced by other bee keepers using the leftover beeswax from the honey producing operation—and candles that my wife and I make also from the leftover beeswax.

Visit us to see these marvelous natural bee products (yes, you can use GMP1 for 10% off on orders over $10). Keep in mind we will be adding additional honey sources in 2010 as more bee keepers become aware of our store.  Our motto is, “If a bee makes it, we carry it!”

Charles de Andrade
Bee Natural Products, Inc.