Some interesting facts about bees
Honey bees' wings beat 11,400 times per
minute.
Bees' flight speed averages only 15 miles per hour.
Bees possess five eyes.
Honeybees can perceive movements that are separated by 1/300th of a second.
Humans can only sense movements separated by 1/50th of a second. Were a bee to
enter a cinema, it would be able to differentiate each individual movie frame
being projected.
Bees cannot recognize the color red.
Honeybees' stingers have a barb which anchors the stinger in the victim's body.
The bee leaves its stinger and venom pouch behind and soon dies from abdominal
rupture.
Africanized Honey Bees (killer bees) will pursue an enemy 1/4 mile or more.
Honeybees communicate with one another by "dancing" so as to give the direction
and distance of flowers.
A single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees.
Queen bees
The queen is the only sexually developed female in the hive.
The queen mates in flight with approximately 18 drones. She only mates once in
her lifetime.
A queen can lay 3,000 eggs in a day.
Queens can live for up to 2 years.
A queen can lay her weight in eggs in one day and 200,000 eggs in a year.
Fertilized eggs will become female offspring, while unfertilized eggs will
become males.
Drones
The only function of drones is to mate with the queen.
Workers
The workers are sexually undeveloped females.
Life expectancy is approximately 28 to 35 days.
Honey
Bees have been producing honey for at least 150 million years.
The honeycomb is composed of hexagonal cells with walls that are only 2/1000
inch thick, but support 25 times their own weight.
Honey is nectar that bees have repeatedly regurgitated and dehydrated.
In the course of her lifetime, a worker bee will produce 1/12th of a teaspoon of
honey.
To make one pound of honey, workers in a hive fly 55,000 miles and tap two
million flowers.
Theoretically, the energy in one ounce of honey would provide one bee with
enough energy to fly around the world.
The honeybee is not born knowing how to make honey; the younger bees are taught
by the more experienced ones.