Depends on the class, but my personal experience was that AP students generally had less homework, not more. I found that endlessly amusing, and always took the opportunity to mention that whenever my friends complained about their homework loads in their non-AP equivalents.
Not true at my DS's school. APUSH particularly is about triple the amount of work of the regular US History. (Depends a bit on teacher) And for a kid like mine who can take a long time to get work done, it's even more aggravating. And this AP Bio class is going to be a huge amount of work. The exception I have found is honors math isn't any more work than non-honors just faster paced and more difficult problems. On the other hand the honors & AP classes sometimes (depending on the teacher) the homework is more optional and matters to a lot less of the grade. And the work tends to be less tedious.
Finding a balance is hard & tricky. Once I found out that my son had such low processing speed and working memory I realized for HIM we really needed to cut back. Other kids who whip through this kind of work (such as outlining the book) can handle more classes.
