September 11, 2009
20 BEE FACTS
- A single bee colony can produce more than 100 pounds (45 kg) of extra honey and this is what is harvested by the beekeeper.
- It takes one colony of honey bees (around 30,000 bees) to pollinate an acre of fruit trees.
- Pollination success increases if there are more honey bees present at the time of peak flowering.
- A honey bee flies up to 24 km /hr or 15 mph and its wings beat 200 times per second or 12,000 beats / minute.
- Bees fly more than once around the world to gather a pound of honey.
- The average life of a honey bee during the working season is about three to six weeks.
- There are five products that come from the hive: Honey, beeswax, pollen, propolis, and royal jelly.
- A bee must collect nectar from about 2 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey. It requires 556 worker bees to gather a pound of honey.
- A normal colony of honey bees contains only one QUEEN who may lay 2,000 eggs per day during her busy season there may be 60,000 or more WORKER bees (undeveloped females ) who do all the work. There will also be several hundred DRONES (Male bees).
- The worker bees are all female and they do all the work for the hive: cleaning, feeding the baby bees, feeding and taking care of the queen, packing pollen and nectar into cells, capping cells, building and repairing honeycombs, fanning to cool the hive and guarding the hive.
- The worker bees perform the following tasks outside the hive as Field Bees: Gathering nectar and pollen from flowers, collecting water and a collecting a sticky substance called propolis.
- The value of bees pollinating fruits vegetables and legumes is 10 times the value of honey produced, over $1 billion in Canada.
- In Canada, the per capita consumption of honey is one kilo (or 2.2 pounds) per year.
- Honey bees communicate by doing a dance which alerts other bees where nectar and pollen is located. The dance explains direction and distance.
- Bees have two stomachs - one stomach for eating and the other special stomach is for storing nectar collected from flowers or water so that they can carry it back to their hive.
- Nectar is a sweet watery substance that the bees gather. After they process the nectar in their stomach they regurgitate it into the honeycomb cells. Then they fan with their wings to remove excess moisture. The final result is honey.
- Honey was found in the tombs in Egypt and it was still edible!
- Bees have been here around 30 million years.
- Bees carry pollen on their hind legs called a pollen basket.
- Pollen is a source of protein for the hive and is needed to feed to the baby bees to help them grow.
From the Canadian Honey Council website and the Ontario Beekeeper’s Association website.