Honey Bee Facts

Honey Bee Facts

• A bee flies at a rate of about 15 miles per hour. Their wings flap11,400 times per minute, which is why it sounds like they are “buzzing”.

• Bees are insects with two stomachs, six legs, two pairs of wings, a head, an abdomen and five eyes. They can see ultra violet lights and can perceive movements that are separated by 1/300th of a second.

• Bees are the only insects in the world that make food for humans and they are estimated to be around for thirty million years.

• They must visit 2 million flowers, traveling 55,000 miles on average to be able to make a pound of honey.

• Honey bees account for 80% of all insect pollination and so agriculture depends on bees greatly. Lack of honey bee pollination could result in a significant decrease in the yield of fruits and vegetables.

• 30 – 35% of all foods eaten is derived from honey bee pollination: almonds, melons, cherries, cucumbers, alfalfa, avocados, cranberries, plums, prunes, apples, apricots and more.

• There are three kinds of bees in a hive: Queen, Worker and Drone.

As the only sexually developed female, queen mates with approximately 18 drones, can lay 2000 to 2500 eggs in a day and can live for up to 2 years.

Drones live to mate with the queen, but not more than one in a thousand get the opportunity to mate. They have no other functions in the hive.

The workers are sexually undeveloped females with a life expectancy of roughly 28 to 35 days. They do all the work: Cleaning, feeding the babies, looking after the queen, building honeycombs, guarding the hive, gathering nectar and pollen from flowers, collecting water and propolis.

• It is estimated that 1100 honey bee stings are required to be fatal.

• There are five products that come from the hive: Honey, beeswax, pollen, propolis, and royal jelly.

• And last but not least for the honey bee facts, communication between honey bees is simply by “dancing”, this is how they give direction and information about flowers’ distance to each other. How cool is that!!