Americans eat roughly twice as much honey per person as they did a generation ago, and most of it comes from other countries. The Economic Research Service (ERS), the research arm of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), set out the trend in a chart published on 23 June 2026. In 2025, it said, 78 percent of the US honey supply came from imports.
Per capita use nearly doubled in 35 years
According to ERS, the average American used just over 1 pound of honey a year in 1990. Per capita use reached a record 2.0 pounds in 2024 and stood at about 1.9 pounds in 2025, nearly double the 1990 level.
ERS attributed the rise to two factors working together: a growing population, and each person eating more honey. Both have pushed total demand upward.
Honey is the sweet food that bees make from the nectar of flowers. Enzymes from the bee's glands are mixed into the nectar, breaking complex sugars such as sucrose into simpler sugars such as glucose and fructose.
Home production fell while imports filled the gap
USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), in its annual Honey report released on 13 March 2026, put US honey production in 2025 at 116 million pounds, down 14 percent from 2024. The number of honey-producing colonies fell 7 percent to 2.41 million, and the average yield per colony fell 7 percent to 48.0 pounds.
The same report said US beekeepers received an average of $3.05 a pound for their honey in 2025, up 27 percent from $2.41 in 2024. Producer stocks on 15 December 2025 were 34.8 million pounds, 15 percent lower than a year earlier.
Where the imported honey comes from
ERS said 78 percent of the US honey supply in 2025 was imported, with India, Argentina, Brazil and Vietnam the main sources. Much of the country's growing demand is therefore met by honey produced by beekeepers in those countries.
For a global picture, figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAOSTAT) show world honey production of about 1.9 million tonnes in 2023, with China the largest producer at about 463,500 tonnes.
The ERS figures come from its Sugar and Sweeteners Yearbook Tables. The chart was prepared by Vidalina Abadam, D. Adeline Yeh and Simla Tokgoz, and a fuller discussion appears in the June 2026 Sugar and Sweeteners Outlook.
Photo: Scott Bauer, USDA ARS / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Sources: USDA Economic Research Service, USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (Honey, March 2026), Wikipedia (Honey; FAOSTAT data)
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