How many bees does it take...

Looking at the video below, I counted 44 arrivals in one minute.

If the bees are active for ten daylight hours (08:00 to 18:00) at 40 arrivals a minute, there are 24,000 arrivals per day.

A colony might produce 25kg of honey in a summer. To do so, each bee brings a load of about 5 microgrammes of nectar or pollen back to the hive per trip, minimum.

In fact, a great deal of the nectar and pollen brought into the hive does not contribute to honey production (it actually produces more bees, honeycomb wax, propolis and bee poo), so either there are more trips or they carry more per trip.

And in a hive of (say) 50,000 bees, not all will be at the fetch-and-carry stage...

Thought you might like to know.