We harvested our first batch of honey this year. After not taking any last summer and losing our colony over winter, we decided this year to go for it. Last year we took a conservative approach and didn’t take any of the honey for fear that the bees would not have enough honey to feed on through the long winter. The reward for waiting was sweet indeed. Two gallons of pure, unfiltered, raw honey drizzled from our Flow Hive, right into these jars. These bees were busy! This got us thinking, just how busy were these bees?

Here are the numbers behind making our 2.5 gallons of honey:

• Approximately 20,000 bees live in our hive
• Each bee visited 27,000 flowers
• That’s a total of  54,000,000 visits to flowers
• One bee produces one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in it’s lifetime
• To get the pollen for 2.5 gallons of honey, the bees collectively traveled 1.5M miles, which is the equivalent of 60 times around the world
• The honey was collected from Memorial Day to mid-July
• The average lifespan of a summer bee is 6 weeks, they work themselves to death

As someone who used to be terrified of bees, I can attest that the fear started to dissipate when I learned how complex and miraculous they are. They truly are on one mission; to make honey for their colony. And whether you believe it or not, stinging you is not on their to-do list today.