Apis mellifera) honeybees are fascinating creatures. From scientific studies to historical pieces of information, here are some fun facts about our buzzing friends!
Bees must fly more than 55,000 miles just to produce one pound of honey; that is equivalent to flying around the world twice!
Bees possess 170 odorant receptors and possess a sense of smell 50 times stronger than that of dogs, each hive possessing its own distinctive smell.
1. They’re mighty travelers
One honey bee on its foraging journey may visit 50 to 100 flowers on any given trip and never revisit any one flower more than once. Over their lifetime a worker bee may cover enough ground to equate to flying around the Earth once, carrying loads that exceed half her own body weight.
Perfect hexagonal honeycomb cells enable beehives to store an ample supply of honey with minimum beeswax consumption, and forager bees will make use of an additional strategy known as the “waggle dance” when finding food sources outside their hive: they perform an unpredicted dance called the “waggle dance” to inform their sisters where to find it.
Bees possess 170 odorant receptors that give them an enhanced sense of smell fifty times stronger than dogs – they even detest human breath odor!
2. They’re super pollinators
Honey bees are essential pollinators as they can collect vast quantities of nectar and pollen from just one flower, spreading it around to other plants as they travel.
Honey bees communicate the location of a suitable food source to their followers by performing a dance known as the waggle dance, which informs them on distance and direction to travel when searching for it.
At night, they use the sun as their compass; on cloudy days they employ polarized light instead. Furthermore, they have an external hind-leg “pollen basket”, known as corbicula that stores pollen.
Honey bees are eusocial insects, meaning they live in complex societies with division of labor and interbreeding between individuals, as opposed to solitary bees that live and breed alone. Within 6-8 weeks of its lifespan, one worker bee can produce approximately 1/12th teaspoon of honey!
3. They’re a sweet surprise
Honey bees are Maine’s official insect, producing so much delicious 3,000 year old honey that it was discovered in King Tutankhamen’s tomb! Honey can be used to alleviate hangover symptoms, prevent colds and treat dementia; its sense of smell 50 times stronger than a dog is an additional asset; their hind legs contain pollen presses which compress grains for storage in its corbicula.
Bees possess five eyes – two large compound eyes and three smaller ‘ocelli’ eyes in the centre of their heads – each sensitive to blue light which allow them to detect the hues of flowers for pollen collection purposes. Workers bees can carry loads equivalent to up to 80% of their bodyweight of nectar and pollen!
4. They’re a busy city of activity
One hive can contain thousands of bees, each playing its part to keep the environment warm, feed their queen and forage for nectar or pollen – an individual honey bee can carry up to 80% of its own bodyweight in nectar or pollen!
Honey bees use their sense of direction – which involves using sun position and polarized light as signals – to locate food sources. Honey bees communicate their location through dance patterns such as the “waggle dance,” which marks where food sources lie.
Bees have an amazing ability to adapt their foraging schedule based on weather forecasts! That is why supporting wild bees and helping them flourish is of such vital importance – By Jude Coleman of Mongabay.
5. They’re super smart
Bees are astoundingly intelligent. To survive in their environment, they must recognize flowers, determine if they offer sufficient sources of nectar, and locate their way back home again – any misstep could waste energy and put bees in harm’s way.
They’re also extremely quick, reaching speeds up to 15 miles per hour in flight – much faster than most insects!
Researchers have taught bees to associate certain facial structures with sugar solutions, and when trained, were able to locate photos over 80% of the time!
All this is remarkable considering a bee has only the size of a grass seed in its brain, yet they show amazing feats of behavior with such limited processing power. God truly created them beautifully!
6. They’re a mighty navigator
Honey bees are highly social insects, living and breeding together as part of an interdependent colony in a collective manner to care for their offspring. This differs from solitary bees which live and reproduce individually.
When foragers discover a good food source, they will use an intricate sequence of movements known as the “waggle dance” to notify their sisters of its location. Each direction and speed of this dance contains specific information regarding its source of nourishment.
Bees are master navigators. Their front feet feature claw-like structures to capture pollen while their tongues boast over 300 taste sensors and their antennae boast more than 500. Furthermore, their antennae are covered with positively charged branch hairs which attract negatively charged pollen grains, helping bees collect pollen from flowers and transport it back to their hives.
7. They’re a bustling city of activity
On a single foraging trip, worker bees can carry an amount of pollen or nectar equal to 80% of their body weight in pollen or nectar stores. Bees exhibit remarkable symmetry by building hexagonal honeycomb cells reminiscent of geometry studies by any mathematician.
Workers communicate between themselves using an unusual dance, known as the waggle, that transmits important information about food sources. Scientists spent two years breaking this code!
At the center of every hive is its leader: the queen bee. As the only female in its colony and an egg layer herself, she lays approximately 2,500 each day. When it’s time to replace her, worker bees select a larva and feed it royal jelly – an extremely nutritious milky substance which causes significant biological changes which could result in it becoming the new queen bee.
8. They’re a mighty navigator
Honey bees visit 50 to 100 flowers during each collection flight to gather enough nectar to make one pound of honey, all while beating their wings 200 times per second and creating their iconic buzz.
A beehive contains three distinct bee types, known as queens, drones and worker bees. Each serves a distinct role within their colony depending on age and needs; queens produce eggs while maintaining temperature; male drones fertilize female receptive bees through fertilization while worker bees perform various duties such as searching out food sources as well as communicating through dance movements with fellow bees using the iconic “waggle dance.”
Bees are natural navigators, using the sun as a compass and sensing polarized light to detect movement. Furthermore, their sense of smell surpasses that of any mammal species.
9. They’re a mighty navigator
Honey bee rear legs feature stiff hairs designed specifically to transport and store pollen grains as they travel between flowers. Their pollen baskets can hold as much as one twelfth of teaspoon!
Bees communicate about food sources by engaging in an elaborate dance known as the ‘waggle dance’, with different directions and speeds of dance movements that signal to their fellow hive mates where food may be located by speeding or slowing their dancing movements. This gives an indication of where and how close food sources might be located within their territory.
Bees utilize the sun as a compass and have been found to be sensitive to polarized light that penetrates cloud cover. Bees are adept at adapting, even during winter when temperatures decrease: when temperatures decrease they form tight clusters within which vibrating bodies generate heat while conserving energy by vibrating together in balls that create heat through vibrational energy production and conservation. Read more:
10. They’re a mighty navigator
Honey bees are nature’s ultimate explorers! To produce one pound of honey, honey bees must collect nectar from more than two million flowers!
On a typical foraging trip, honey bees visit up to 100 flowers at once using their powerful wings which travel up to 15 mph while beating 200 times every second!
Bees use the position of the sun as a compass to navigate. Their eyes can detect polarized light which helps them find their way even on cloudy days.
Honey bees in the wild often mate with drones from other colonies to spread their genetic material and propagate new colonies. Female queen bees mate just once in their lifetimes before producing hundreds of eggs with her own spermatheca for fertilizing male receptive drones; only she possesses this power within the colony.