DID YOU
KNOW
THAT?

INTERESTING FACTS FOR THE LIFE OF BEES

  • Honey is the first sweetener used by humans.
  • There are more than 12,000 sorts of bees.
  • Works are assigned among bees according to their age.
  • Every bee, out of the 50,000 of a beehive, has a particular mission and schedule. Every one of them knows exactly what to do at any time and nothing happens randomly.
  • A bee will collect half to one gram of honey during her life.
  • For the production of a kilo of honey around 4-5 kg of nectar are required, that is to say 12,000 bees should fly for 150,000 km and visit 4 million flowers.
  • During each trip, a bee visits around 50-100 flowers.
  • For each 1 gram of nectar one bee has to work for 3 days!
  • Around 8 kilos of honey will be consumed by the bees to produce 1 kilo of wax!
  • The flight circle to look for food may approach 3-4 km. It may reach 7-8 km in periods of shortage!
  • Bees are aware that the Earth is round and are able to calculate it in degrees.
  • With the energy of 28 gr of honey a bee could make a flight around the Earth!
  • The flight speed of a bee is around 30 km/h!
  • Bees are not able to recognize the red color.
  • Bees' blood is cold.
  • Self-sacrifice for others. Bees die after biting us.

When a bee tries to leave after a bite, its stinger snags into the body of its victim, it parts from her belly together with the gland bearing poison and a part of her digestive system. The nerves of the poisonous gland keep pouring poison for 30 seconds from the moment after the bee has left. However, the bee has no possibility to survive. Having lost organs of vital importance, it dies after some hour!

It is a really strange defensive weapon, since it cannot be used, unless the bee sacrifices its life!

It is actually a suicide from the side of the bee, to assure its hive and the existence of its sort.

  • The annual nutrient needs of a beehive of normal size correspond to around 22 kg of pollen and respectively 70 kg of honey. To collect these quantities of food one million flights of foraging bees are performed during the year for pollen and respectively four million flights of foraging bees for nectar!
  • The hexagon shape of the honeycomb’s cells makes the best of the space available, on what concerns material economy, capacity and firmness!
  • The larvae of queen bees are exclusively fed with bees’ royal jelly, a product of glandular emissions. On the contrary, the larvae of worker bees are fed with bees’ royal jelly only for the 3 first days and with a mix of honey and pollen for the following days!
  • The duration of life of a queen bee ranges between 2 to 5 years, whereas the duration of life of a worker bee is 35-45 days for summer and spring bees, and 3 to 5 months for autumn bees, WHO work less!
  • The size of a queen bee is twice as much as a worker bee, and she engenders daily 2,500 eggs, that is to say 2.5 times her weight!
  • In order to consider a "honeymoon" successful, a queen bee has to return to her beehive bearing 5.5 million sperms into her sperm case, after having mated with 8-10 drones! From then on, she does never again mate!
  • Bees perceive by smell the death of their queen.
  • The change of the queen bee would change the character and behavior of a bee settlement.
  • Into any beehive there is a queen; in case two or more queens are present, then a battle will take place and the stronger of them prevails by killing the others!
  • Respect to the chief, but also democracy. Worker bees follow precisely the orders of the queen bee, they respect, protect and take care of her until the last day of her life. At the same time, however, the worker bees are those who decide in spring, if the old queen has to leave and be substituted by a younger and stronger chief.
  • "Dances" are the most advanced form of communication between bees. The other bees perceive the dance moves into the dark beehive by tactile and hearing, as they follow the “dancer” bee in her dance, whilst they perceive the sounds of the moves as vibrations on the honeycomb. A complement of the message is the smell of nectar or pollen transferred by the "dancer" bee. Bee dances provide mainly information on the distance and direction of food from the beehive! For decoding this language, the German Biologist Karl von Frisch was awarded a Nobel!
  • "If something eliminates bees from the planet, mankind will perish within 4 years". This quote is ascribed to Albert Einstein and lies on the fact that without bees’ pollination in plants could not take place and accordingly without plants there would be no animals; without animals it would be difficult for the human beings to survive.

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"Real Honey From Delphi"