Facts About Honey Bee

Perhaps the only insect that produces edible food for humans in the form of honey, the honey bees are regarded as one of the most hardworking creatures of nature. No other insect has served the food needs of man than the quintessential honey bee. Honey is effectively produced in one of the world’s most efficient factories - the Bee Hive. It is known to be man’s earliest insect friend due to the fact that it gives us honey and beeswax and also helps in the pollination of plants and crops. Did you know that honey bees have to flap their wings more than 12,000 times per minute, so that they can carry the honey or the pollen for their journeys back home. Also, did you know that honey bees had to produce about 60.lbs of honey to survive during winter? If you think you are already familiar with honey bee facts, then think again! There are many interesting facts about the honey bee that will fascinate you. So read on for some amazing information on the honey bee.

Facts About Honey Bee

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Arthropoda

Class: Insecta

Subclass: Pterygota

Infraclass: Neoptera

Superorder: Endopterygota

Order: Hymenoptera

Suborder: Apocrita

Family: Apidae

Subfamily: Apinae

Tribe: Apini

Genus: Apis

Interesting And Amazing Information On Honey Bees

Bees have the ability to maintain an average temperature of 92-93°F in their hive, irrespective of whether the outside temperature is 110°F or –40°F.
Beeswax is produced from the eight paired glands on the underside of the abdomen of the honey bee.
Did you know? Bees can’t see red.
Worker bees fall due to exhaustion when collecting food or cleaning the hive. However, Queen Bees lead a very relaxed life and only leaves the hive once every 2-3 years, since she rarely flies.
To search for food, honey bees can fly up to 14 kilometers away from their nest. To look for flowers, they usually fly one or two miles.
Though entirely herbivores, honey bees may cannibalize their own brood when stressed!
An average bee usually visits 50-100 flowers a day for pollen/honey. However, a hard-working bee may make round trips to forage for more pollen or honey. This figure could be anything from 1500-2000 flowers a day.
The ratio of queen bees and drones in one bee hive is1 (Queen bee) : 800 (drones).
There are over 30,000 species of bees all over the world.
In order to be able to bio-chemically produce one pound of beeswax, honey bees have to consume 17-20 pounds of honey.
A busy bee hive may contain anywhere between 40,000 to 60,000 bees during the late spring or summer season.
The average life span of worker honey bees in summers in about 4 weeks and in winters, it is around 6 weeks.
Bees are believed to be picky eaters and prefer salvia flowers and leave the flowers they don’t like too much for the last.
The Queen bee has a sperm sac known as spermatheca, in which she stores the sperms after mating with a number of drones during her ‘mating flight’. This ensures she has lifetime supply of sperms and never has to mate again.
The Queen Bee can control the flow of sperm in order to fertilize an egg and may lay 600-800 or even 1,500 eggs each day during her 3 - 4 year lifetime.
Honey bees communicate with each other about direction and distance from the hive to nectar sources through a special ‘dance language’, making it one of the most complex, symbolic languages any insect or animal uses to communicate on earth.
Did you know that drones (make honeybees) live to serve only one purpose? Yes, the drones provide sperm to the Queen bee and once they have done that, they die immediately after the mating process.
Apiatherapy, which is a special treatment that involves treating the patient with bee stings, is believed to stimulate blood flow, relieve tension and pain.

How to Cite

Related Articles

See also

More in 'Society'