"Honey bee trivia"
Although all insects are important in the balance of nature, the Honey Bee is of great value to mankind. 'The Value of Honey Bees in the Mid-Atlantic Region' - Honey bee pollination of crops in the Mid-Atlantic region is valued at $131 million (this link will take you to a pdf file of the brochure). Click for brochure: "The Value of Honey bees in PA"
It takes 556 worker honey bees flying 35,854 miles, making 80,000 trips, visiting 2 million flowers to produce just 1 pound of honey!
About one-third of the total human diet is derived directly or indirectly from insect pollinated plants of which 80% is accomplished by Honey Bees!
Aren’t Honey Bees great?
Honey bee trivia…
- A Honey bee has 4 wings
- A Honey bee has 5 eyes, two of which are compound and three simple eyes.
- All of the worker bees in a hive are female
- A Honey bee flies 15 M.P.H.
- A Queen Honey bee begins her life as an ordinary female worker larvae, but by being fed Royal Jelly, she develops into a queen.
- The Honey bee is the only insect that produces food consumed by humans.
- A male or Drone bee has no father but a grandfather on his mothers side. His only purpose is to fertilize a virgin queen.
- The Queen Honey bee lays approximately 2,000 eggs a day during warm weather.
- Each worker bee will only produce 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey and 1/80th of a teaspoon of beeswax during her life.
- A Honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during an average nectar collecting flight yet only makes 1/12 teaspoon of honey during her lifetime!
- During summer months there are 50-70,000 bees in each colony of which only a few hundred are male bees and only ONE QUEEN!
- Each year it takes over 1 million colonies of honey bees to pollinate California’s Almond groves!
- Honey bees communicate to each other through dancing! View the video below to see exactly how they do it.