While the notion of a "busy bee" is instantly 
refuted the first time one marks a forager 
in an observation hive and tracks what it
does during a day, the "32 trips" is a 
understatement.  

Sure, foragers are not constantly foraging, 
but I've personally seen the same marked 
forager return to a feeder dish a dozen 
times in a single morning.  Researchers
with more patience likely have higher
counts.

A few factoids quoted from Jurgen Tautz's 
book "The Buzz about Bees" (soon available 
in English!) will help here:

1) The energy content of a full load of 
   nectar amounts to 500 J (joules).

2) During an average lifespan, a forager 
   carries 50 kJ back to the nest.

3) The foraging force of a colony, involving 
more than 100,000 individuals during a summer, 
undertakes several million foraging lights, and 
carries about 3-4 million kJ of energy back 
to the hive.

What can we conclude from these averages?


a) 50kJ is 100 times 500 J, so 100 trips per
   forager career seems more reasonable 
   minimum in light of more recent science.

b) Many forager careers are cut short by
   misadventure, which lowers averages
   drastically.

c) The numbers are inherently sloppy.  Even
   the book I quoted is inconsistent in its
   counting and math - re-read (3) above, and
   note that "more than 100,000" bees making
   "several million foraging flights", implies
   tens of trips per bee rather than hundreds
   or even a hundred.

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