Originally Posted by Table 5
Some sweet bee facts.
• It is the only insect that produces food eaten by man.
• Honey is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and water; and it's the only food that contains "pinocembrin", an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning.
• Honey was found in the tombs in Egypt and it was still edible! Bees have been here around 30 million years.
• The honey bee's wings stroke incredibly fast, about 200 beats per second, thus making their famous, distinctive buzz. A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour.
• The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
• A hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles, the equivalent of three orbits around the earth to collect 1 kg of honey.
• A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.
• The bee's brain is oval in shape and only about the size of a sesame seed, yet it has remarkable capacity to learn and remember things and is able to make complex calculations on distance travelled and foraging efficiency.
• A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honeybees and one queen. Worker honey bees are female, live for about 6 weeks and do all the work.
• The queen bee can live up to 5 years and is the only bee that lays eggs. She is the busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to 2500 eggs per day. Click here to learn more about the Honey Bee Life Cycle,
• Larger than the worker bees, the male honey bees (also called drones), have no stinger and do no work at all. All they do is mating.
• Only worker bees sting, and only if they feel threatened and they die once they sting. Queens have a stinger, but they don't leave the hive to help defend it.
• It is estimated that 1100 honey bee stings are required to be fatal.
|