Leading honey producing U.S. states 2023

This statistic shows the ten U.S. states where the highest amount of honey was produced in 2023. According to the report, North Dakota produced approximately 38.3 million pounds of honey that year. 

Honey production in the United States - additional information

The use of honey can be traced back to ancient times, with eight thousand year-old cave paintings depicting humans harvesting wild honey. Recorded history shows that honey has been used as part of foods and drinks, as medicine and as part of sacred rituals by many cultures around the world. In modern times, honey is still sometimes collected from wild bee colonies, but most of the worldwide production comes from domesticated beehives. The leading five worldwide producers alone, China, Turkey, Argentina, Ukraine and the United States, harvest annually a combined 1.2 million metric tons of natural honey.

The yearly per capita honey consumption in the United States ranges between 0.9 and 1.5 kilograms of honey. Other countries where honey consumption per capita per year exceeds one kilogram are Austria, Germany and Switzerland. In 2021, the estimated deliveries of pure honey for domestic food and beverage use in the United States amounted to approximately 241 thousand short tons. In 2021, the total amount of honey produced in the country was an estimated 126.5 million pounds.

The United States is a major exporter of honey towards countries such as the Philippines, Canada, or South Korea. It also imports honey from all over the world, including Canada, India or Vietnam. India is however the largest source of honey to the United States, with over 44 thousand metric tons delivered in 2018 alone. As of 2021, the value of the honey industry in the United States was estimated at some 321.22 million U.S. dollars.