Speed of Work
Honeybees visit up to about 40 flowers per minute depending on floral type, nectar availability and weather conditions. Floral visitation rate by honeybees of some important crops:
| Flower | Seconds per visit |
|---|---|
| Apricot | 10 |
| Apple | 68 |
| Cherry | 82 |
| Raspberry | 116 |
| Black currant | 134 |
The longer the time period, the greater the nectar availability. It takes twice as much time to collect a load of nectar compared with a load of pollen. A bee will visit 100–1000 flowers per trip from the hive.
There is general agreement that a single bee will do an average of 10 trips per day (range 7–13). Large single loads of nectar may weigh 70 mg for Italian bees. Sometimes a hive may gain 4–10 kg in a single day. For a 5 kg (11 pounds) gain this means:
In two days a strong hive with more than 20,000 foragers may fill a honey super. This is for nectar, ripe honey has its water fraction reduced significantly.
Read more about this topic: Honey Flow
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