“Busy as a Bee”​—How Busy?

How much do bees have to work to provide the beekeeper with a single kilogram (2.2 lbs.) of honey? A circular put out by the German Apiarist Society, Inc., gives us the answer. In one hour, it says, a bee can pollinate about 700 blossoms. To produce one kilogram of honey, however, requires that the bees fly to more than seven million blossoms! That means that a single bee​—if it would live that long—​would need almost 10,000 “flying hours,” or some 15 months, to gather one kilogram of honey. The bee would have to fly a distance of 240,000 kilometers (150,000 mi.), equal to about six times around the earth at the equator.