Quick Facts

  • A honeybee makes 0.8 g (1/10 teaspoon) of honey over the course of her lifetime.
  • Bees help to produce not only more but also larger fruit and vegetables.
  • A honeybee flies up to 24 km/h or 15 mph, and its wings beat 200 times per second or 12 000 beats per minute.
  • Honey colour and flavour depend on the flower source.
  • The average life of a honeybee during the working season is about six weeks.
  • In summer, a colony of honeybees has 50 000 to 60 000 bees.
  • The average Canadian eats 1 kg of honey per year.
  • Bees have four wings.
  • Native pollinators are disappearing rapidly and each year we become more dependent on honeybees for many of our daily foods.
  • Honeybees visit about 4 million flowers to make 1 kg of honey.
  • Each honeycomb cell has six sides.
  • Bees have been producing honey from flowering plants for 10 to 20 million years.
  • Drones have big eyes to help them spot the queen bee.
  • In Canada, the value of bees pollinating fruit, vegetables and legumes is over $1 billion per year: that's ten times the value of honey produced.
  • There are about 11 000 beekeepers in Canada.
  • On any given search for food, a honeybee visits fifty to a hundred flowers.
  • Wine made from fermented honey is called mead.
  • It takes one colony of honeybees to pollinate an acre of fruit trees.
  • Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are Canada's largest honey producers.
  • There are no reports of Africanized honeybees in Canada!
  • Honeybees are responsible for pollinating one-third of Canada's food crops.