05/20/2022
Happy World Bee Day! 🐝
Here’s a few fun facts about the magnificent honey bee
Honey bees can fly 15-20mph
A colony can contain up to 60,000 bees
A single worker bee produces 1/12th tsp of honey in her lifetime (30-45 days is their lifespan in the spring/summer)
Queen honeybees mate once with 10-12 drone bees. The s***m is stored for her entire lifetime (5years)
A queen lays 1000+ eggs EACH DAY
Honeybees have a complex, symbolic language and communicate through dance
Drones (male bees) have one duty: to mate with a queen. After doing so they immediately die. Any remaining virgin drones are kicked out from the hive before winter so that just the females remain.
A hive is very hot and humid - about 85-92°F year round
Beeswax is produced by special glands found on the bees abdomen
A worker bee will travel up to 5 miles from its hive and May visit 2000 flowers/day
The hive control which type of bees will be born. The type of bees produced from honey bee eggs is dependent on what the larvae are fed. Queen cells/larva are fed only royal jelly. Bees that are fed fermented pollen (bee bread) and honey become female workers.
Hives can produce an emergency queen. Bees work together as a whole and have a very complex system. If they know the queen is weak, sick, near the end of her life or if they don’t have enough room to expand the growing hive, they will rear up a new queen.
Bees are very clean! They work hard to keep a hygienic hive. The only bee to defecate in the hive is the queen. During the winter months bees store up their waste and do a “cleansing flight” on warm days. Can you imagine holding it for months at a time?!
Honey bees are so conscientious, that they'll do whatever it takes to die outside of the hive if at all possible so their corpses won't contaminate food or pose a threat to nursing young.
