If you spend much time outside, you’ve noticed we’re in the heart of bee season. Hornets, ground bees, bumble bees and other pollinators are active, some aggressively so. With all the buzzing and swarming going on, it makes sense that September is National Honey Month.
To celebrate, we’ve got this list of bee facts from The American Bee Journal with just enough information to make you sound nerdy the next time the topic of honey comes up (if ever), but not enough to fool a real beekeeper. Enjoy!
- The honey bee is the only insect that produces food eaten by man.
- A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour, hence it would have to fly around 90,000 miles -three times around the globe – to make one pound of honey.
- It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee’s flight around the world.
- Honey is 80% sugars and 20% water.
- Honey bees produce beeswax from eight paired glands on the underside of their abdomen.
- Honey bees must consume about 17-20 pounds of honey to be able to biochemically produce each pound of beeswax.
- Bees maintain a temperature of 92-93 degrees Fahrenheit in their central brood nest regardless of whether the outside temperature is 110 or -40 degrees.
- A populous colony may contain 40,000 to 60,000 bees during the late spring or early summer.
- The queen bee lives for about 2-3 years. She is the busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to 2500 eggs a day.
- The queen may mate with up to 17 drones over a 1-2 day period of mating.
- The queen may lay 600-800 or even 1,500 eggs each day during her 3 or 4 year lifetime. This daily egg production may equal her own weight. She is constantly fed and groomed by attendant worker bees
- Worker honey bees live for about 4 weeks in the spring or summer but up to 6 months during the winter.
- The average honey bee will actually make only one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.
- Honey bees fly at up to 15 miles per hour
- The Honey bee’s wings stroke 11,400 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz.
- A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.
- Honey bees, scientifically also known as Apis Mellifera, are environmentally friendly and are vital as pollinators
- 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.
