Honeybee facts

·         Bees fly an average of 13-15 mph.

·         A bee travels an average of 1600 round trips in order to produce one ounce of honey; up to 6 miles per trip. To produce 2 pounds of honey, bees travel a distance equal to 4 times around the earth.

·         Honeybees visit about 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey.

·         During honey production periods, a bee's life span is about 6 weeks.

·         Just a single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees!

·         Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans.

·         About 8 pounds of honey is eaten by bees to produce 1 pound of beeswax.

·         Beeswax production in most hives is about 1 1/2% to 2% of the total honey yield.

·         The average hive temperature is 93.5 degrees.

·         Queens will lay almost 2000 eggs a day at a rate of 5 or 6 a minute. Between 175,000-200,000 eggs are laid per year.

·         The speed at which honey bees fly is at 15 miles per hour.

·         The sole purpose of a drone bee is to mate with the queen bee.

·         Bees from the same hive visit about 225,000 flowers per day. One single bee usually visits between 50-1000 flowers a day, but can visit up to several thousand.

·         Honeybees have hair on their eyes.

·         A colony of bees has to fly almost fifty-five thousand miles and tap two million flowers to make one pound of honey.

·         A honey bee strokes its wings about 11,500 times a minute.

·         Bees can communicate with other bees by dancing. Their dance can alert other bees as to which direction and the distance nectar and pollen is located.

·         It takes 12 honeybees to make one teaspoon of honey. In a lifetime, on average a honey bee produces 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.

·         In one trip, a honey bee visits about 75 flowers.

·         In one day, a queen bee can lay up to 1500 eggs in one day.

·         Honeybees use the sun as a compass which helps them navigate.

·         A honey bee has four wings.

·         A bird called the bee eater in areas of Africa thinks that riding around on the backs of other animals is fun!

·         The honeybee has to travel an average of 43,000 miles to collect enough nectar to make a pound of honey!