At each tree, Papa declares that he is sure there is honey inside of it, but instead variously encounters an owl, a porcupine, and a family of skunks.

After the bees leave and the bears exit the water, Papa gives up and readily buys the honey from the store, as Mama suggested before.

[2] Stan and Jan Berenstain, a husband and wife team from Pennsylvania, were already successful illustrators and cartoonists by the time The Big Honey Hunt was published, with their work appearing in magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and Good Housekeeping throughout the 1940s and 1950s.

[3][6] Freddy Bear's Spanking slowly became The Big Honey Hunt, and in the process, the Berenstains began to develop a formula for writing and illustrating children's books.

[7] According to their 2002 memoir, Down a Sunny Dirt Road, this included "easy words, short sentences, word/picture clues, rollicking rhythm, resolute rhyme... shameless slapstick and outrageous jokes".

The Big Honey Hunt was published in 1962 by Beginner Books, an imprint of Random House co-founded and edited by Dr. Seuss.

[10] Initially, after its release, Stan and Jan proposed creating a series based around their bear characters to be published by Beginner Books, but Seuss encouraged them to do something different.

In 2002, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the book's original publication, the Berenstains published an edition with an updated cover.