Facts about bees

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.