Amazing Facts About Bees

Here are some amazing facts about bees and honey.

Did you know:

• Bees have been around for more than 30 million years.
• A bee’s wings beat around 200 times a second, that’s 11,400 times a minute. This makes them super flyers who can fly at about 25km per hour.
• There are around 20,000 species of bees in the world but not all of them produce honey.
• Bees pollinate 75% of the world’s main food crops.
• A honey bee hive will contain 1 queen, hundreds of male drones and thousands of female workers.
• The queen bee will lay around 1,500 eggs a day. If the queen dies, the workers will create a new queen, by selecting a new young lava and feeding it royal jelly.
• Bees are the only insect in the world that make food that people can eat.
• On average, a honey bee hive will produce 24 jars of honey in a season, but one bee will only make 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its entire life.
• Honey contains all of the substances needed to sustain life, including enzymes, water, minerals and vitamins.
• Many plants rely on insects like bees in order to be pollinated; which is why they provide nectar.
• It is only the female worker bees who will sting you, but only if they feel threatened.
• Each colony smells different to bees, this is so they can tell where they live. Bees communicate by smells called ‘pheromones’ and by performing special ‘dances’.
• It would take 1,100 bees to make 1kg of honey and they would have to visit 4 million flowers.
• A third of all the plants we eat have been pollinated by bees.
• Honey tastes differently depending on the flowers the bees use to make it.
• Honey has natural preservatives and can be stored for use indefinitely.