About Our Bees
Here are some amazing facts about Bees.
FACT 1. Honey Bees love to travel and typically travel up to 2-5 miles foraging on plants, flowers & trees. They must visit 2 million flowers and fly over 55,000 miles to make 1 pound of honey.
FACT 2. Each hive contains approximately 60,000 bees made up of a queen, worker bees & drones and each hive can produce up to 100 pounds of honey per year.
FACT 3. Bees die when they sting. Bees are gentle by nature, if you don't bother them they won't bother you. They need a pretty good reason to sacrifice themselves by stinging. They are defending their hive, their only shelter, which takes tremendous effort to build. They are protecting their honey supply which they need to survive for the winter. They are protecting their young which they nurture their first weeks of life before they can fend for themselves and most importantly they are protecting their queen, without whom there is no future.
FACT 4. Drones (the male bee) can live up to 4 months. Their sole purpose is to mate with the queen. Once no longer needed they get pushed out of the hive (I know that is sad but that is nature).
FACT 5. The Queen Bee has the important job of laying eggs to create the next generation of bees and can lay up to 2,000-3,000 eggs per day. All bee larvae are fed some royal jelly for the first few days after hatching but only queen larvae are fed the jelly exclusively. As a result of the difference in diet, the queen will develop into a sexually mature female, unlike the worker bees. Queens are raised in specially constructed queen cells. Queen bees live up to 5 years.
FACT 6. Worker bees are female bees and make up 99% of the population of the bee colony and protect the hive and forage for pollen and nectar.
FACT 7. Have you wondered how honeybees can buzz so loudly? Their wings stoke 11,400 times per minute.
FACT 8. Over 70% of crops grown around the world are pollinated by bees, so if it weren't for the bees there would not be enough food to feed everyone.
FACT 9. Pollination occurs when the bees visit flower to flower sipping nectar & collecting pollen. The little fuzzy hairs on their bodies are dusted with pollen powder which is spread from flower to flower.
FACT 10. The three types of bees depend on each other and would not survive without each other & humans would not survive without the honey bee.
