Honey Bee Information
March 23rd, 2003

Bees maintain a temperature of 93.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the 
brood nest regardless if the outside temperature is 110 or -40 degrees.

Bees must consume 20 pounds of honey to be able to biochemically produce one 
pound of beeswax.  Honey bees produce beeswax from eight paired glands on the 
underside of their abdomen.

Bees will travel six miles from the hive to search for food.  Usually, however, they fly one
or two miles from the hive to forage for flowers.  A bee travels an average of 1,600 round
trips in order to produce one ounce of honey.

Worker bees only live about four to six weeks in the Spring and 
Summer but will live six to ten weeks in the winter.

During the summer, a queen bee can lay up to 3,000 eggs per day, which is 
equal to her body weight.  She lays about six to ten per minute and about 200,000 per year.

The queen only leaves the hive once in her life and that is to mate, which is done in flight 
at 15mph with about 18 drones (male bees).  The queen stores the sperm from these 
matings in her spermatheca, thus she has a lifetime supply and never mates again.

Honey has been used as medicine for over 5,000 years to treat burns and such.  Also, it was
one of the things used to embalm people such as Alexander the Great.  Honey is currently being
tested on super bugs that are antibiotic resistant.

Bees may travel up to six miles from the hive in their search for flowers, visiting many locations.
When they find a good source of nectar, they can fly a straight line back to the hive and tell the 
rest of the hive the exact location.

The queen controls the attitude of the hive by smells called pheromones.

Bees can tell when the moisture content of honey is exactly 15% and
will not cap it until it reaches that point to prevent it from fermenting.

While gathering nectar, bees will be gone from the hive for a few minutes up to four hours with 
an average trip being about one hour.  Bees will make about ten nectar gathering trips per day.

The average honey bee will produce 1/12 teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.

Bees must visit two million flowers and will fly over 55,000 miles to make one pound of honey.

Honey bees were called "White man's flies" by North American natives
because European colonists brought them when they came to America.

Honeycomb cells all have six sides and don't vary by more than 1/10,000 of an inch.  
The walls of the cells are 2/1000 inch thick and support 25 times their own weight.

 It would take one ounce of honey to fuel a bee to fly around the world.

Honeybees have four wings that beat at 11,400 times per minute which makes their distinctive buzz.

Bees fly an average of 13-15 miles per hour.

A single bee will visit 1,000 flowers per day, but sometimes twice that many.

Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for man.

A queen bee can control the flow of sperm to fertilize an egg when she is about to lay an 
egg.  Honey bees have an unusual genetic sex determination system known as haplodiploidy.  
Worker honey bees are produced from fertilized eggs and have a full (double) set of chromosomes.  
The males, or drones, develop from unfertilized eggs and are therefore haploid with only 
a single set of chromosomes.

Fermented honey, known as mead, is the most ancient fermented beverage.  The term "Honeymoon" 
originated with the Norse practice of consuming large amounts of mead during the first month of marriage.