A Taste of the Honey Business
By: Anne C. Lee from FastCompanyThe bees of America have been working hard all summer: To make a pound of honey, they have to fly the equivalent of eight roundtrips between New York and Paris. Now it's time to enjoy the fructose of their labor. Have a taste of the facts and figures on honey.
Last year, 161 million pounds of honey were produced in the U.S., up 8% from 2007.
North Dakota produced 35 million pounds, worth $47.4 million -- more than any other state.
Häagen-Dazs has donated $500,000 to Penn State and UC Davis for Bee research; 50% of its flavors are made with ingredients requiring bee pollination.
Honey bee pollination supports $15 billion worth of agriculture in the U.S.
Crops such as apples cherries, and avocados are 90% dependent on it.
1,600 commercial beekeeping ooperations produce 60% of American honey.
The world's most expensive honey is Believed to be Trgothnan manuka honey from Britain.
Only 100 4-ounce jars are made per year; each sells for $80, about $11 a teaspoon.
California, which produces more than half of the world's almonds, needs almost 1 million colonies of honey Bees to pollinate that crop.
The U.S. had 2.3 millon honey-producing Bee colonies in 2008.
Honey bees tap 2 million flowers and fly more than 55,000 miles to make one pound of honey.
Wholesale honey prices rose in 2008 to an all-time high of $1.41 per pound, up 30% from 2007.
The average American consumes 1.29 pounds of honey a year.
The mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder has killed more than 33% of U.S. commercial honey Bees since 2006.
There average worker bee makes 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.
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