Honey is created when bees process and dehydrate plant nectar, or sometimes honeydew, for long-term food storage. This process involves adding enzymes and vigorously fanning the fluid to reduce its water content, which concentrates the sugars and prevents fermentation. While over 20,000 distinct bee species are cataloged globally, fewer than four percent actually produce honey. Most bee species have life cycles that negate the need for the mass food preservation required to create a harvestable product.
The Primary Honey Producers
The definitive answer to which bees produce honey on a commercial scale rests almost entirely with the genus Apis, known as the honey bees. The Western Honey Bee, Apis mellifera, is the species domesticated worldwide and is responsible for the overwhelming majority of the global honey supply. Their capacity for mass production is a direct result of their unique social biology.
Apis colonies are perennial, meaning the entire population, including the queen and worker bees, survives through the winter months. To fuel this large, active colony during periods without flowering plants, the bees must stockpile a substantial reserve of energy. This necessity drives them to process nectar into large volumes of stable, low-moisture honey, often producing far more than the colony requires for survival.
Other species within the genus, such as the Eastern Honey Bee (Apis cerana) and the Giant Honey Bee (Apis dorsata), also produce significant amounts of honey. These species are managed or harvested from wild colonies in Asia and Africa. However, the Western Honey Bee remains the species primarily used in modern apiculture due to its adaptability and exceptional yields, often tens of kilograms per hive annually.
The Lesser-Known Honey Makers
Beyond the Apis genus, the most notable group of honey-producing insects is the Stingless Bees, classified under the tribe Meliponini. These bees, found primarily in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide, also live in large, permanent colonies and therefore require food reserves. They store their honey in small, distinct pots made of wax and propolis, rather than the large hexagonal combs characteristic of honey bees.
The honey produced by stingless bees is compositionally different from Apis honey, featuring a higher moisture content. This higher water content, coupled with a lower pH value, gives the honey a characteristically runnier consistency and a tangy, sometimes acidic flavor. The product is often called “sugarbag” in Australia, where native species like Tetragonula are managed for their unique honey.
Stingless bee colonies produce honey in much smaller quantities, often less than one kilogram per hive per year, making it a specialty product. The unique properties of this honey, including a high level of antioxidants and compounds like trehalulose, contribute to its higher market value and traditional use in various cultures. This low volume production prevents it from competing with Apis species in the large-scale commercial market.
Why Most Bees Do Not Make Honey
The vast majority of bee species do not engage in honey production because their life cycles do not demand it. Over 75% of bee species are solitary, meaning the female works alone to build and provision individual nests for her offspring. She collects just enough pollen and nectar to create a single food ball, upon which she lays an egg before sealing the cell.
Solitary bees, which include species like mason bees and leafcutter bees, do not live in colonies that require long-term sustenance. The adult female dies after provisioning her nests, and the next generation develops alone over many months, often emerging the following spring. This life strategy necessitates only enough food for the development of a single larva, not a massive winter stockpile for thousands of adult workers.
Other social species, such as bumblebees (Bombus species), do form colonies but operate on an annual cycle, not a perennial one. Only the newly mated queen survives the winter, hibernating alone underground. In the spring, she starts a new colony and stores a small amount of nectar in wax pots to feed her first brood of workers. Once the cold returns, the entire colony, except for the new queens, dies, eliminating the need for a large honey reserve.