Lives of Bees by Thomas Seeley

Delightful in-depth journey of an apiologist’s life’s work documenting the nature of wild honey bees in New York state.

“To summarize, I estimate that the yearly food consumption of a wild colony where I live is approximately 44 pounds of pollen and 132 pounds of honey (55 pounds in winter 77 in summer)..The number of foraging trips required to procure the materials consumed by a wild colony and the efficiency of this foraging work are both rather easily calculated. With respect to pollen, a typical load weights 0.0005 ounce, so the collection of 44 pounds of pollen requires approximately 1.3million foraging trips. Given an average total flight distance – out and back – of 2.8 miles, a flight cost of 6.5 joules per kilometer and an energy value for pollen of 14,250 joules per gram, the total cost of lying to collect this pollen is 3.8 x 10^7 joules. And the pollen energy value is nearly 2.9 x 10^8. These numbers show that worker honey bees achieve an approximately 8:1 ratio of energy return in collecting pollen… More number crunching indicates that worker honey bees achieve an approximately 10:1 ratio of energy return when they collect nectar.”