Fun Bee Facts
Help Make A Real Difference |
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| Bees are responsible for pollinating a third
of the crops we eat. |
| Bees fly at an average speed of 20 mph, in
flight a bee beats its wings around 180 times
per minute! |
| Honey Bees sleep, and can often be found
catching a snooze on a flower. Plus they have 5
eyes! |
| Bees are the only insect that produces food
eaten by man. |
| A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000
honeybees and one queen. |
| A bee will visit between 50-100 flowers
during one trip. |
| A queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day. |
| Worker honey bees are female. They live for
6 to 8 weeks and do all the work. |
| The male honey bees are called drones. They
don't do any work as such, their main role is to
reproduce. They have no stinger. |
| Honey bees communicate with one another by
"dancing". This special Waggle dance tells other
worker bees, the location of water or good
forage for example. |
| A queen honey bee can control the colony by
producing a unique odour or pheromone. This
unique "smell" helps to identify colony members
and stops female workers becoming fertile and
breeding. |
| To collect a pound of honey a bee might have
to fly a distance equivalent to twice round the
world. This is likely to involve more than
10,000 flower visits on perhaps 500 foraging
trips. |
| It has special 'baskets' made of stiff,
curving hairs on its back legs, to carry pollen
back to the hive. |
| We produce only 20% of the honey we consume
- the rest is imported. |
| Bees are able to detect
and use gravity to navigate whilst in total
darkness within the hive. |
| Bees can see
near-ultraviolet light. Many flowers, have
patterns that are invisible to humans unless
illuminated by UV. |
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