Honey Bees:
- Bees fly an average of 13-15 miles per hour.
- A bee’s wings beat 180 times per second.
- During the production period, or spring and summer, a worker bee's average life
- span is six weeks.
- Worker bees are all female.
- Honeybees visit approximately two million flowers to make one pound of honey.
- A bee travels an average of 1600 round trips in order to produce one ounce of
- honey - as far as 6 miles per round trip.
- To produce 2 pounds of honey, bees travel a distance equal to 4 times around the
- Bees from the same hive visit approximately 225,000 flowers per day - one bee
- usually visits between fifty and a thousand flowers per day, but sometimes up to
- several thousand.
- Approximately 8 pounds of honey is consumed by bees to produce 1 pound of
- Queens will lay approximately 2,000 eggs per day at a rate of 5 or 6 per minute -
- between 175,000 and 200,000 eggs are laid per year.
- The queen may mate with up to 17 drones over a 1 to 2 day period of mating flights.
- The queen stores the sperm from her mating voyage, giving her a lifetime supply.
- She only mates once in her lifetime.
Hives:
Bees do not sleep; however, they can be found resting in empty cells.
- There are 40,000 to 60,000 bees in a beehive during honey-gathering season.
- The average temperature of a hive is 93.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Honey:
- Honey is 80% sugar and 20% water.
- Honey has been used as a topical dressing for wounds since microbes cannot live in
- It also produces hydrogen peroxide.
- Honey has been used to embalm bodies.
- Fermented honey, known as mead, is the most ancient fermented beverage.
- The term "honey moon" originated with the Norse practice of consuming large
- quantities of mead during the first month of a marriage.
- Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans.