The honey bee is the only insect that helps human to fulfill his needs. Since the period of time, the beekeepers have raised honey bees, and gather sweet honey produced by them. Also, it depends on them to pollinate the crop. The interesting fact about bees is that they pollinate almost all crops like fruits, vegetables, and flowers which humans usually consume! This way they help plants to grow. The Honey bee is one of the most intelligent and hard-working insects.
Why this buzzing insect is very famous? Because of their Delicious honey! They produce honey as food storage during winter. But fortunately for us, these hardworking bugs produce 2 to 3 times more honey that they required.
This article helps us to find out the top 10 fascinating facts about honey bees.
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Honey bees live in colonies or you can call hives.
The Honey bee is a very organized insect. They are separated into 3 types.
- Queen: One queen runs the whole colonies. Her job is to produce eggs that will create the next generation of bees. The queen bee is busiest in summer months because during summer, she can lay more than 2000 eggs per day.
- Workers: the main role of worker bees is to search for food and protect the queen at all temperatures. This means if the temperature falls these bees insulate the queen from cold. And in summer worker bees circulate air by beating their wings and protect the queen from overheating. These are all female bees.
- Drones: Drones are the male bees. And their intention is to mate with the queen. They supply sperm to the queen. After they have fulfilled that function they die.
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Honey Bees can fly up to 15 miles/hr:
Bees can fly up to 15miles per hour which is quite slow speed in the insect world. But this tiny insect builds only for short trips from flower to flower, not for covering a long distance. Their small wing flap 12000 to 15000 times per minute just to collect food.
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One Colony Contain up to 60,000 bees:
They are a much-organized insect. All 60000 bees done there work as per there allotment. Some nurse bees care for the young ones, worker bees search for food for the whole colony, attendant worker bees feed and bath to the queen bee. Some construction worker constructs the beeswax in which the queen lays eggs and the worker store honey. Undertaker bees help to clean the colony and bring the dead bees from hives.
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A single worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon honey:
Worker bees live just five to six weeks. During this time she will create 1/12th teaspoon honey. Honey bees power is only their unity. From spring to fall the worker bees produce almost 60 pounds of honey for whole hives to sustain during winter. Each bee has a strong sense of smell. Due to this, she recognizes the smell of different types of flowers which help them to search for food.
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Queen honey bee stores sperm for a lifetime!
The life of the queen bee is three to five years. Her biological clock is very fast because the new queen flies from the hives to mate just a week after rising from her cell. If she was unable to do mate up to 20days she loses her ability to mate. But if she was succeeded, then she certainly not needs to mate again.
She carries the sperm in her spermatheca and uses it for fertilization throughout her life. Generally, a queen will take sperm from 12 to 15 drones to maintain genetic health and diversity of her hives. But if queen bee dies then other worker bees create a new queen by selecting young larva that is newly hatched baby bug. And provide her special food called ‘royal jelly’. This convertss larva into a fertile queen.
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Honey bees use symbolic language for communication:
Honey bees are the most intelligent bugs in the world of insects. They pack with million neurons in their brain and that measure mere cubic millimetres. And these brilliant bees use all of them! Quit exciting knows? Worker bees perform lots of task during their life. To share information about food with other workers they perform ‘waggle dance’ means they waggle their body to indicate the direction of the food source.
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Beeswax comes from the special glands on the abdomen:
The youngest worker bees produce the beeswax. This is used to construct the honeycomb. This beeswax comes from the underside of the abdomen of worker bees. This wax flax gets harder if exposed to air. Hence worker bees make them softer by chewing them in the mouth and then it is used as a construction material.
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Worker bees may visit 2000 flowers per day:
As a tiny insect, she cannot carry lots of pollen at a time. So she visits only 50 to 100 flowers at a time before heading home. She repeats this round trip much time at one single day. And because of this hardworking schedule, she may live only 3 to 5 weeks and covers 500 miles.
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It’s a women world:
The male bees cover only 15 percent of the colony. They come from unfertilized eggs. There work is to just mate and eat. But they are a good sign for the hive because their existence shows that the colony has enough food. Still, they are driven out from hives at the end of the session because of the use of the hive’s resources.
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Their existence is in danger:
Unfortunately, over the last 15 years. Hives of bees have been disappearing, and no one found the reason behind it. According to ‘Colony Collapse Disorder ‘lots of honey bees leave their hives and never come back.
It’s very disappointing that from many regions, this brilliant bug already disappeared.
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We need to execute some strong initiatives to support this intelligent insect community. We must grow lots of flower plants such as lavender and bluebells which will help them to find food for their survival. Also, keep in mind always choose local pure British honey which will support honey bees as well as a beekeeper.
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