In honor of my zany brother-in-law and the fact that this week will be largely spent away from the computer and outside digging in the dirt so the bees can come back, I give you Thirty Interesting Facts About Bees. Enjoy!
- Honey bees' wings beat 11,400 times per minute.
- Bees' flight speed averages only 15 miles per hour.
- Bees possess five eyes.
- Honey bees 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, but they can see ultraviolet colors.
- 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.
- 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.
- The only function of drones is to mate with the queen.
- The workers are sexually undeveloped females.
- The honeybee is not born knowing how to make honey; the younger bees are taught by the more experienced ones.
- Honeybee workers move to different jobs as they grow older: * Week #1 - clean the hive * Week #2 - feed the larvae * Week #3 - do repair work on the honeycomb cells * Week #4 - guard the hive * Week #5 and beyond - collect pollen and nectar from flowers
- Life expectancy is approximately 28 to 35 days.
- 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 never spoils.
- 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.
- The average American consumes a little over one pound of honey a year.
- To make one pound of honey, workers in a hive fly 55,000 miles and tap two million flowers.
- In a single collecting trip, a worker will visit between 50 and 100 flowers. She will return to the hive carrying over half her weight in pollen and nectar.
- Theoretically, the energy in one ounce of honey would provide one bee with enough energy to fly around the world.
- Wasps feed on sweet liquids, and some that have been feeding on fermenting juice have been observed, eventually, to get drunk and pass out. (I know, I know, it's not a bee fact, but I thought it was hilarious)
