Mead industry statistics 2026

Key statistics

US meaderies (2025)

500+ (AMMA)

US meaderies (2003)

About 60 (AMMA)

Global mead market (2023/24)

$425M to $642M, 4 analyst estimates

Forecast growth

8.4% to 11.2% a year

US honey production (2025)

116 million lb (USDA NASS)

US honey price (2025)

$3.05 per lb, up 27%

US honey supply imported (2025)

78% (USDA ERS)

World honey production (2024)

1.99 million tonnes (FAOSTAT)

The US mead industry

There is no government count of meaderies. Federal permits do not separate mead from other wine, so the best figures come from the American Mead Makers Association (AMMA), the trade group for US mead producers. According to the AMMA (2025), the number of commercial meaderies grew from about 60 in 2003 to about 200 in 2013, about 300 in early 2016 and more than 500 in 2025. The AMMA also counts about 50 additional wineries and breweries that make at least one mead.

Other milestones, with their sources:

• 130% sales growth in one year. An AMMA member survey found mead sales rose 130% from 2012 to 2013, faster than beer, wine, distilled spirits and hard cider, according to Brewbound (2014). The same report said meaderies made up 2.5% of American wineries.
• A new meadery every three days. Over an 18-month period in 2016 and 2017, a new meadery opened every three days in the US and every seven days in the rest of the world, according to AMMA figures reported by BeverageDaily (2018).
• A young industry. In the same AMMA data, 67% of surveyed meaderies had been operating for less than five years and only 6% for more than ten, according to BeverageDaily (2018).

Global mead market size

Every published mead market size comes from a commercial research firm selling a report. None of them publishes its full method for free, and they disagree on the base-year value by about 50% and on which region is largest. We list the ones we could open and read, side by side.

Taken together, the estimates put the global mead market at roughly $425 million to $642 million in 2023 or 2024, growing 8.4% to 11.2% a year to somewhere between $0.9 billion and $1.8 billion by the early 2030s. The average of the four base-year values is about $535 million.

Honey supply: US and world

Honey is mead's only essential ingredient and its biggest cost. A standard mead uses about 3 lb of honey per gallon (see our honey per gallon guide), so at the 2025 average producer price of $3.05 per pound, the honey for one gallon costs about $9.15 before any retail or packer markup. That is our arithmetic from USDA prices. A gallon of honey itself weighs about 12 lb, which puts it at roughly $36.60 at the same price: see the price of honey per gallon.

US honey production

According to USDA NASS (2026), US honey production in 2025 was 116 million pounds, down 14% from 2024. There were 2.41 million honey-producing colonies, down 7%, and yield per colony averaged 48.0 pounds. The average price rose 27% to $3.05 per pound, and the value of production was $353 million. Producer stocks on December 15, 2025 were 34.8 million pounds, down 15%.

Those five states produced 57% of US honey in 2025. The price spread is wide: bulk honey from the Dakotas sold under $2 a pound, while North Carolina averaged $7.99.

US honey imports and consumption

Most honey eaten, or fermented, in the US is imported. According to USDA ERS (2026), 78% of US honey supply came from imports in 2025, most often from India, Argentina, Brazil and Vietnam. US per capita honey consumption reached a record 2.0 pounds in 2024 and about 1.9 pounds in 2025, roughly double the "scarcely more than a pound" of 1990.

The shift is recent. According to USDA ERS (2021), imports reached a near-record 433 million pounds in 2020, up 73% in ten years, and made up 70% of honey available for US consumption, up from 54% in 2010. US production held around 156 million pounds a year over that period; in 2025 it was 116 million.

World honey production

According to FAOSTAT, world natural honey production was 1.99 million tonnes in 2024 (an FAO estimate), up 58% from 1.26 million tonnes in 2000. China alone produces more than the next three countries combined.

By region, FAOSTAT's 2024 figures put Asia at about 925,000 tonnes, Europe at 438,000, the Americas at 343,000 and Africa at 251,000. The FAO (2025) reported that Africa has the fastest growth rate of any region. FAOSTAT revises past years: the FAO's World Bee Day release in May 2025 gave 2023 world output as 1.894 million tonnes, while the current database shows 1.96 million for 2023.

Regulation and federal tax in the US

Mead is regulated as wine by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). The key facts:

• Class: wine from agricultural products. Under 27 CFR 4.21(f), wine made wholly from one agricultural product is designated "wine" qualified by that product, and the regulation gives "honey wine" as its example. Within the class, table wine is up to 14% ABV and dessert wine is over 14% and up to 24%.
• "Mead" and "honey wine" are interchangeable on labels. TTB policy allows either term as the designation for honey wine that meets the standard of identity, according to TTB's FAQs.
• Plain honey wine needs no formula approval. TTB Ruling 2016-2 granted a general-use formula for standard honey wine. Adding flavors or colors (other than hops), or blending honey wine with other agricultural wines, needs an approved "other than standard" formula.
• Braggot is beer. Honey fermented with malted barley is a malt beverage; "braggot" can appear on the label only as additional information, not as the designation.

Small producers pay far less. Under the Craft Beverage Modernization Act, domestic wine producers get a tax credit of $1.00 per gallon on the first 30,000 gallons each calendar year, 90 cents on the next 100,000 and 53.5 cents on gallons from 130,000 to 750,000, according to TTB. For a small meadery making still mead at 16% or less, that cuts the federal tax on its first 30,000 gallons from $1.07 to 7 cents a gallon.

Consumers and search demand

There is no national survey of mead drinkers. What we can measure is how often Americans search for it. The table below is our own data.

Three things stand out. Education leads: "what is mead" draws 22,200 searches a month, more than three times "how to make mead." Home production is a real segment, with recipe and kit searches adding up to more than 16,000 a month across the terms above. And style names such as cyser, melomel and metheglin each draw about 1,000 searches, so a meaningful number of drinkers know mead beyond the basic style. Answers to the most common questions are in what is honey wine and honey wine alcohol content and calories.

History in numbers

That puts honey-based fermentation at roughly 9,000 years old, according to Penn Museum. The full story, from Jiahu to Viking halls, is in our history of honey wine.

How to cite this page

Methodology

We included a number only if we could open the original source and read the figure there. Each figure carries its publisher and year in the text, and every source is listed at the bottom of the page.

• Government data (USDA NASS, USDA ERS, FAOSTAT, TTB) is quoted as published. Percent shares of state and country production are our calculations from those tables. FAOSTAT values marked with an asterisk are FAO estimates or imputations.
• Industry counts come from the American Mead Makers Association and trade press reporting of AMMA surveys. They are the best available but are not a census.
• Market size estimates come from commercial research publishers. We read their public summaries only, did not buy the reports and cannot check their methods. At least one widely quoted estimate, from Grand View Research, is not listed because its page blocked access and we could not confirm its figures.
• Search volume is our own pull of Google US average monthly searches via DataForSEO in September 2026.

We review the page when USDA publishes its annual honey report each March and when new AMMA figures appear. Spotted a newer number or an error? Tell us and we will check it.

Frequently asked questions