33 amazing facts about honey bees

Continuing with the subject we are passionate about, here are 33 surprising facts about bees and honey. We have not yet reached 33, which is an interesting number, but we will be adding more until we reach that number. Also, some of them you might know, but many of them you might not, this will depend on your knowledge about beekeeping. What they are all very curious, from our point of view. Whether they are curious or not, what we do wish, is that you like them and are entertained by reading them.

Summary: Curious facts about beekeeping and honey. Moreover, in our shop in Las Rozas you will find a fantastic selection of monofloral and multifloral honeys of the highest quality.

Related articles: Where to buy quality raw honey? Raw unpasteurised honey.

1. 33 Surprising facts about honey bees in general

Here we begin to give you some curious facts about beekeeping, bees and honey. We are also going to divide them into several blocks until they form together the 33 surprising facts about bees and honey. Some of them you may know, but all of them are more difficult.

Let’s start;

1. Bees are the only insect that produces food that humans eats.
2. Most bees do not produce honey: only a few of them. There are about 20 000 solitary bees that do not form a colony and do not produce honey.
3. Bumblebees also produce honey but in very small quantities not sufficient for harvesting.
4. Bees are insects with a body divided into three parts; head, thorax and abdomen like any other insect.
5. Ancient Egypt valued beekeeping highly, using honey as a bargaining chip. This can be seen in their paintings.
6. There were no bees in North America until Europeans brought them and they spread rapidly throughout the Americas.
7. Bees have a unique survival strategy of storing honey in the spring, summer and winter seasons to make it available in the autumn season.
8. The ability of bees to fly has only recently been discovered, previously researchers did not understand how they were able to fly.
9. In a hive we can find different colours of bees.
10. The members of the colony also relate to each other with pheromones, i.e. chemical compounds. Therefore, the colony is regulated by these pheromones, especially with the queen bee.
11. Bees never sleep, bacause they do not have eyelids. However, they go through a period of inactivity where they gather strength and are even thought that they have dreams.
12. Bees can fly at 15 miles per hour, although on windy days, their speed is slower.
13. The hives are built with hexagons, as this is the structural form that maximises the storage of honey or pollen with the least amount of wax, which is what the hive is built with.
14. Bees have 5 eyes, 2 big compound eyes for vision and 3 small simples eyes (ocelli) for light detection. They also have small hairs on their eyes.
15. Bees beat their wings 200 times per second, which is what gives them the ability to fly and creates the perceptible sound waves when they are close to us. Each hive has its own distinctive
16. scent for them, which keeps the bees from getting confused and arriving at their hive.
17. The temperature of the bees is always maintained at around 33°C regardless of the external heat, whether it is very cold or very hot.
18. Bees have three pairs of legs, each consisting of several segments. They are joined together with muscles and tendons, with which they can make the bends they need.
19. The third leg, also called the “corbiculae”, has structures called pollen baskets, which it uses to transport pollen.
20. Bees have 6 knees, as they have 3 pairs of legs, each leg with its own knee.
21. An worker bee’s lifespan is about 4 weeks in spring and summer, and up to 6 months in winter.

Photo 1: Eucalyptus trees in Galicia

a) Facts about the queen bee

We leave you more data about bees, but we leave them in another section as we only include data about queen bees.

1. Queen bees are much more laborious to feed. A larval bee has to be fed about 1600 times before it emerges from its cell, in the case of a normal bee it is 143 times.
2. The bees do not mate in the hive, but leave the hive, and at an outside point mate with a male. The mating is with 12 to 20 drones, and sperm is stored to fertilise the eggs. After mating, thedrones die by being torn apart.
3. Queen bees can lay up to 1,000 eggs per day in order to renew the hive.
4. The queen bee does not feed the brood, but she is with them.
5. Queen bees can sting multiple times without dying. In addition, their sting is more harmless. However, they sting sometimes to attack competing queen bees.
6. The queen bee also releases a different type of pheromone than other bees. For this reason, if the queen bee disappears, the whole hive soon finds out.
7. The queen bee can mate with up to 17 drones in just one or two days.
8. The bees make their characteristic sound when they move about 11,400 times per minute.

b) Facts about drones

Male bees are less well known and have very little function in the hive. However, they also have some very remarkable curiosities that set them apart from the other bees in the hive.

1. Drones, the male bees, come from unfertilised eggs, so they are haploid and have half as many chromosomes as the female bees.
2. Drones also have no sting, so they are not able to defend themselves and the colony.

c) Facts about honey and wax

Finally, here are some other facts about honeys.

1. Honey never expires if it is well preserved.
2. Bees produce wax thanks to 8 glands under their abdomen.
3. Bees need about 18 grams of honey to produce 1 gram of wax.

We have already compiled 33 fun facts about bees. We could select many more but these have been a selection of curious and lesser known facts about bees.

References:

Carolibahoneybees Blog