There are three main types of bees in the hive - queen bee, worker bee and drone bee.
The queen bee’s only job is to lay eggs and a drone bee’s job is to mate with the queen bee and a honey bee’s job is to feed the young, look after the hove and produce honey.
Honey starts off as flower nectar which is collected by bees, and transported to the hive where it is turned into honey.
The queen bee’s only job is to lay eggs and a drone bee’s job is to mate with the queen bee and a honey bee’s job is to feed the young, look after the hove and produce honey.
Honey starts off as flower nectar which is collected by bees, and transported to the hive where it is turned into honey.
Pollen is collected by the bees and the bees feed it to their young - it is called the 'bread of the bee' - is is pure protein!
Bees are busiest in spring and summer.
Bees are busiest in spring and summer.
Beekeepers wear white or light colours to keep the bees calm.
Stingers are used by the bees as a last resort to defend themselves or their colony.
Many honey bees are dying worldwide - this is due to environmental factors like pollution and use of pesticides on plants.
Bees recognise each other. A honey bee has 500 times the sense of smell that a dog has.
Honey bees wings stroke 11,400 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz.
Honey bees fly at 15 miles per hour.
A honey bee colony can contain up to 50,000 bees at its peak.
It takes a lot of bees to get all the work done. Nurse bees care for the young, while the queen's attendant worker bees bathe and feed her. Guard bees stand watch at the entrance of the hive. A guard bee's age is usually 18-21 days old.
A single honey bee worker produces about 1/2 a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
For honey bees, there's power in numbers. From spring to autumn, the worker bees must produce about 40 lbs. of honey to sustain the entire colony during the winter. It takes tens of thousands of worker bees to get the job done.
Depending on the size of the colony, and the harshness of the winter, a bee-keeper may choose to add some extra food (fondant) to sustain the bees until spring.
The queen honey bee lays up to 1,500 eggs per day, and may lay up to 1 million in her lifetime which is 3-4 years.
A been has 6 legs - 4 of the front are used to land on, and the 2 at the back are used to collect pollen.
Bees communicate with each other through a dance called a ‘waggle dance’ - they use the 'waggle' dance to tell the other bees where to find the most pollen and nectar.
If a queen bee dies, the workers bees will know this because the queen bee emits a 'pheromone'. The worker bees will then feed royal jelly to a very young larvae (2 hours old) which becomes the next queen bee.
Just 48 hours after mating, the queen begins her lifelong task of laying eggs. The queen bee is so prolific an egg layer that she can produce her own body weight in eggs in a single day.
Drones, the only male honey bees, serve only one purpose: they provide sperm to the queen. About a week after emerging from their cells, the drones are ready to mate. Once they've fulfilled that purpose, they die.
Queen bees only mate on their maiden flight and this can sometimes involve mating with 20-30 drones. In this mating, she will have enough semen to last her a lifetime of 3-4 years.
