Honeybees have fascinated scientists for decades…and for good reason! The beehive is a delicate colony where each sector of the community must play out its well-defined role in order for the community to survive. There are 3 types of honeybees: the worker, the drone and the queen – none of which can live on their own.
Honeybees are one ofscience’s great mysteriesbecause they have remained unchanged for 20 million years, even though the world changed around them.
Bees have been producing honey for at least150 million years.
The true honeybee was not known in the Americas until Spanish, Dutch, and English settlers introduced it near the end of the 17th century.
Did you know that bees have4 wings?
The honeybee’swings stroke 11,400 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz.
A bee flies at a rate of about12 miles per hour.
How manyeyesdoes a honeybee have? Five.
Honeybees communicate with one another by“dancing”.
The queen bee is the busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength. She will lay about1,000 to 1,500 eggsper day.
In the cold winter months, bees will leave the hive only to take a shortcleansing flight. They are fastidious about the cleanliness of their hive.
Honeybeesdo not die out over the winter. They feed on the honey they collected during the warmer months and patiently wait for spring. They form a tight cluster in their hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.
It takes35 pounds of honeyto provide enough energy for a small colony of bees to survive the winter.
Honeybee colonies haveunique odorsthat members flash like identification cards at the hive’s front door. All the individual bees in a colony smell enough alike so that the guard bees can identify them.
The honeybee is not born knowing how to make honey; theyounger bees are taughtby the more experienced ones.
Some worker bees arenurse bees. Their job is to feed the larvae.
A honeybee visits between50 and 100 flowersduring one collection flight from the hive.
In order to produce 1 pound of honey,2 million flowersmust be visited.
A hive of bees must fly55,000 milesto produce a pound of honey.
One bee colony can produce60 to 100 poundsof honey per year.
An average worker bee makes only about1/12 teaspoonof honey in its lifetime.
At the peak of the honey-gathering season, a strong, healthy hive will have a population of approximately50,000 bees.
It would take approximately 1 ounce of honey tofuel a bee’s flight around the world.
A Cornell University paper released in 2000 concluded that the direct value of honeybee pollination to U.S. agriculture is$14.6 billionannually.
We should appreciate honeybees for their honey and pollination services.80% of the pollinationof the fruits, vegetables and seed crops in the U.S. is accomplished by honeybees.
Honey is theprimary food sourcefor the bee. The reason honeybees are so busy collecting nectar from flowers and blossoms is to make sufficient food stores for their colony over the winter months. The nectar is converted to honey by the honeybee and stored in the wax honeycomb.
The United States has an estimated211,600 beekeepers.
