Honeybee Facts & Information

The easiest way to differentiate a honeybee from other types of bees or wasps is to look at the shape of their thorax and abdomen. Honeybees have a distinctive barrel-shaped body and don’t have a thin middle section between the thorax and abdomen like many other insects. Honey bees get their common name from the honey they make using the nectar of flowers. They are social insects found all over the world and are extremely beneficial because of their role in pollination. In the U.S. alone, honeybees pollinate more than 100 crops.

The vast majority of plant species – almost 90% – rely on pollinators like the honeybee to reproduce. Pollination is the process by which pollinators help plants to produce fruit (technically anything with seeds on the inside, so that includes things we normally think of as vegetables like cucumbers, green beans, and tomatoes) by transporting pollen from one flower to another. There are approximately 200,000 different species of animals around the world that act as pollinators. Of these, about 1,000 are vertebrates, such as birds, bats, and small mammals, and the rest are invertebrates, including flies, beetles, butterflies, moths, and bees. Pollinators provide pollination services to over 180,000 different plant species.

Honeybees are among the most numerous and efficient pollinator species in the world. Considering that the average honeybee can visit more than 2,000 flowers in one day, these bees greatly increase the chances of a plant producing a fruit or vegetable. Honeybees are the species most commonly used as commercial pollinators in the US. They are managed and used to pollinate over 100 crops grown in North America, and contribute $15 billion to the US economy every year. Many crops, such as almonds, which contribute $4.8 billion to the US industry each year, rely on honey bees for more than 90% of their pollination. But honeybees don’t only pollinate crops– they also pollinate wild and native plants, thus contributing to all the environmental and societal benefits attributed to pollinators in general above.

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