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It would be pointless for us to try and cover, in any depth, the fascinating world of the bee on this website. We will therefore content ourselves in
giving you 10 somewhat surprising facts about the honey bee, and then directing you to
several other excellent sites which can provide a much greater insight into both honey
bees, and their close cousins, the bumble bees. |
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When
clustered together in a hive, bees can survive in temperatures below minus 35°
Centigrade for several weeks. |
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When "scout bees"
are searching for food, they will follow a meandering path. However they are able to
return to the hive in a straight line (bee-line), due to their excellent navigating
skills. |
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A standard sized hive can contain over 60,000 bees. |
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In the summer,
the average life expectancy of a worker bee is six weeks. In winter conditions, it
can be nearly six months. |
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A queen bee, on her mating flights, will mate with a dozen or so drones, but will then never mate again during her life. After mating she is capable of producing over 1,000 fertilised eggs a day for 3-5 years. | ||||||||||||
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A drone (the male bee) cannot feed himself, but has to beg food from worker bees (females). | ||||||||||||
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To make 1lb of honey, a colony of bees will collectively fly some 24,000 miles. | ||||||||||||
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Bees have to consume approx 10 pounds of honey to produce one pound of beeswax | ||||||||||||
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A drone can father many daughters, but never any sons. (This is because drones are produced from unfertilised eggs.) |
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The egg of a future queen bee is no different from the egg of a worker bee. It is the food (royal jelly) she is fed whilst still a larva, which determines that she will become a queen. |
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Want to know more about bees ? Then try these sites.
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