- Honey bees, scientifically known as Apis mellifera, are vitally important to the pollination of many food crops.
- The honey bee is the only insect that produces food eaten by man.
- A honey bee typically visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.
- A honey bee would have to fly around 90,000 miles — over three times around the globe — to make one pound of honey. It would take one ounce of honey to fuel her flight around the world.
- The average honey bee will actually make only one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
- Honey is 80% sugars and 20% water.
- Honey bees produce beeswax from eight paired glands on the underside of their abdomen.
- Honey bees must consume about 8 pounds of honey to be able to biochemically produce each pound of beeswax.
- Honey bees maintain a temperature of 92-93 degrees Fahrenheit in their central brood nest regardless of whether the outside temperature is 110 or -40 degrees Fahrenheit.
- A populous colony may contain 40,000 to 60,000 bees during the late spring or early summer.
- Worker honey bees live for about 6-8 weeks in the spring or summer, but up to 6 months during the winter.
- Honey bees normally fly at up to 15 miles per hour.
- The honey bee’s wings stroke 11,400 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz.
- A new queen may mate with dozens of drones over a 1-2-day period.
- The queen is constantly fed and groomed by attendant worker bees.
- The queen lives for up to about 5 years. She is the busiest in the spring summer months, when the hive needs to build to its maximum strength, and lays up to 1500 eggs a day — which may equal her own weight.
- Mead, made from honey, is the most ancient fermented beverage. The term “honeymoon” originated with the Norse practice of consuming large quantities of mead during the first month of a marriage.
