Honey Bees (6527)

The honey bee is the only source of honey and beeswax. Bees produce more than 260 million pounds of honey and about 5 million pounds of beeswax annually in the United States. However, these are merely by-products of the honey bee. The bees principal role is in the pollination of over 60 different crops. Bees annually cross-pollinate a number of important fruit and seed plants such as clovers, apples, lima beans, asparagus, buckwheat, cherries, pears, cantaloupes, watermelons, pumpkins, cucumbers, and many berries. In addition, they harvest and make available to man a portion of the nectar resources of the flowers. This nectar crop is a resource just as certainly as coal, lumber, game and shellfish, can be gathered only by means of the honey bee.

For more information, please visit this (Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium) Maarec Fact Sheet.

Penn State Entomology Department

Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium

For more information on this subject, Please visit the College of Agricultural Sciences Publications Web site.

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