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Interesting Bee Features

Honey bees have been producing honey for over 150 million years. They play an important role in pollinating many fruits and vegetables. There is a strict social hierarchy within the hive with one queen who can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. Worker honey bees are all female and their duties include foraging, building the hive, and caring for the queen and larvae. It takes bees working together and visiting over 2 million flowers to produce just one pound of honey.

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22 views

Interesting Bee Features

Honey bees have been producing honey for over 150 million years. They play an important role in pollinating many fruits and vegetables. There is a strict social hierarchy within the hive with one queen who can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. Worker honey bees are all female and their duties include foraging, building the hive, and caring for the queen and larvae. It takes bees working together and visiting over 2 million flowers to produce just one pound of honey.

Uploaded by

mkn
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Interesting Facts About Bees

● Honey bees have five eyes


● Bees have been producing honey for at least 150 million years
● A cave painting depicting an androgynous figure robbing honey out of the hive was found in the
Cave of the Spider in Valencia, Spain. It is estimated to be 15,000 years old.
● Honey stored in air tight containers never spoils. Sealed honey vats found in King Tut’s tomb still
contained edible honey, despite over 2,000 years beneath the sands.
● 80% of the pollination of the fruits, vegetables and seed crops in the U.S. is accomplished by
honeybees.
● A queen is the largest bee in the hive. She can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day, twice her own body
weight per day.
● Bees have to fly over 55,000 miles to make 1 lb. of honey.
●Worker honey bees are all females. Males do not know how to even feed themselves and their
only reason for being in the hive is for reproducing with the queen. The males do not have a stinger
and they are kicked out of the hive in the autumn, because there are no uses for them.
Honey bees are very clean .They want their hive (which they made themselves, hexagon by
hexagon) to be immaculately clean. If something dirties their hive, they will immediately get the
offense out. The only honey bee in the hive that uses the bathroom inside the hive is the queen.
She never leaves the hive, so her faithful workers get her mess right out. Bees will also make sure
that when their time comes, they will die outside of the hive.
There is only one queen per hive. The queen lives 2-3 years. The queen is made, rather than
born. Worker bees will feed larvae royal jelly for a certain period of time. The royal jelly is secreted
through the heads of the worker bees and is fed through their antennas to the larvae. The royal
jelly has so many vitamins and nutrients it will allow for the larvae to become queens. Since there
can only be one queen per hive, the potential queen bees will fight to the death until there is one
queen remaining.
●Honey bees, like their name implies, are the only insects to make honey. Bumblebees make a
honey like substance, but it tastes nothing like the sweet honey we know and love. They also
make this in very small quantities. Honey bees though make honey in surplus so bee keepers are
able to take a certain amount without hurting the bees or depriving them of food.
The Queen bee lays up to 2,000 eggs per day! She can also select the gender of the larvae.
Most larvae that will be produced will be female..
●To make one pound of honey it would take 556 workers and 2 million flowers. 50-100 flowers
are pollinated during one collection trip. About one ounce of honey is all it takes to give the
honey bee enough energy to fly around the world (although the farthest they usually fly away
from their hive is six miles).
Honey never spoils. No need to refrigerate it. It can be stored unopened, indefinitely, at room
temperature in a dry cupboard.
Due to the high level of fructose, honey is 25% sweeter than table sugar . . 
Honey is created when bees mix plant nectar, a sweet substance secreted by flowers, with their
own bee enzymes.
To make honey, bees drop the collected nectar into the honeycomb and then evaporate it by
fanning their wings.
Honey has different flavors and colors, depending on the location and kinds of flowers the bees
visit. Climatic conditions of the area also influence its flavor and color. NZ’s Rata honey is nearly
white, Manuka honey is rich ginger-brown and Black Beech honeydew honey is dark brown.

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