Buzz on by the Long Hill Library and learn a thing or two about bees & beeKeeping (from A to bzzzZ!)
Honey Bee Facts:
- Bees have been producing honey for at least 150 million years.
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- Honey Bees have 4 wings that beat 11,400 times per minute.
- Honey Bees have 5 eyes.
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- Honey Bees have three pairs of segmented legs used for walking, dust off antennae and transport pollen and propolis (bee glue to seal cracks in the hive).
- A typical honey bee colony consist of:
1 Queen. Mother of all the bees in the colony, she is longer than the other bees.
+/- 300 Drones (male) they are larger with big eyes and make a lot of noise.
+/- 60.000 Worker bees (female). They are doing all the colony's work except reproduction.
- A honey bee colony needs an average of 70 pounds of honey to survive the winter.
- A honey bee can only sting once, when she stings she looses her stinger, venom glands and a part of her guts and dyes after a few minutes.
- There were no honey bees in the U.S. They were imported by the European colonists in the early 1600.
- A honey bee can reach the speed of 15 miles per hour.
- The honey bees can gather the nectar in more than 300 floral sources in the United States.
- The comb is produced by honey bees and are composed of hexagonal cells that are only 2/1000 inch thick, but support 25 times their own weight.
- A honey bee must tap 2 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey.
- The average worker honey bee makes 1 1/2 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
- It would take about one ounce (2 Tablespoons.) of honey to fuel a bee's flight around the world.
- The U.S. per capita consumption of honey is 1.31 pounds.
- There are an estimated 211,600 beekeepers and approximately 3 million honey producing colonies in the United States.
- A honey bee weights an average of 3 grams.
- A honey bee visits between 50-100 flowers during one collection trip.
- To make one pound of honey, honey bees must gather 10 pounds of nectar.
- It takes the equivalent of 8 pounds of honey to make only 1 pound of wax.
- A queen bee can lay 1,500 to 2,000 eggs in 1 day.
- An egg size is 1/16 inch (1.6mm).
- When the honey bees are rearing brood, the temperature inside the hive is 95° F. (35° C.), during winter the cluster is around 85° F.(29° C.).
- If disturbed, bees will normally chase you about 50 feet.
