20 Interesting Bee Facts

what you didnt know about bees 

Bee Facts – What you didn’t know about honeybees

  1. Male honey bees are called drones, and their only purpose in life is to mate with the queen. When they do mate, having sex with the Queen will detach their endophallus which gets stuck inside the queen. While most would think seeing your brothers abdomen ripped out would deter the next drone from mating – not so. These boys are less than bright with the next drone removing the previous endophallus and inserting his own to suffer the same fate. If the drone manages to survive the mating and returns, wounded, to the hive the worker bees kick this lazy gigolo out of the hive and return to work.
  2. When she mates, the queen will collect more than 70 million sperm from multiple males. She will then store this sperm for future use. Perhaps this is where the term, mindless drone, emerged.
  3. The Queen used to be called the King of the hive. In the 1660’s a Dutch Scientist, Jan Swammerdam, dissected the King bee and discovered … ovaries.
  4. Ever thought a bee was targeting you specifically? You’re probably right! Australian Research has shown that bees can recognize human faces. You can check out more on Adrian Dyer’s research.
  5. There are more than 16,000 species of bee. About 5% of these are social bees and will live in a colony, the rest tend to be solitary insects.
  6. Honey will never spoil.
  7. If there is a food shortage and supplies are low, honey bees have been known to eat their larvae and even their hive mates. Cannibalism, while gruesome, is an evolutionary control method for declining supply levels. The older population with the most value eat the younger larvae and eggs.
  8. A bee colony is highly structured and very tidy. These miniature neat freaks will not defecate inside the hive unless they are ill. Bees actually defecate in mid-flight. There is also an army of worker bees who are keeping the hive clean, removing the queen’s waste and other debris.
  9. In line with keeping clean, the worker bees will also act as undertakers. When bees of the colony die, their siblings will drag their dead bodies from the hive and move the corpses away from the colony.  
  10. Bees can identify illness in other bees through smell. Sick bees are promptly chased out of the hive or removed by other bees to keep them away from the honey and larvae.
  11. Bees have an incredibly developed set of senses to aid in their daily routines. The humble honey bee can perceive the difference between images in one 300th of a second. To put this in perspective, humans can perceive the differences in one 50th of a second. They also have a finely honed sense of smell. This is obviously used in their search for flowers but smell is also used by bees for identification and in the mating ritual.
  12. Scientists have trained bees to recognize explosives – no more need for sniffer dogs we now have sniffer bees. Check out the Bomb Sniffing Bees for more details.
  13. Honey was used in World War One to treat wounds. It has natural antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties and draws moisture away from a wound.
  14. Gregor Mendel, father of the theory of hereditary genetics, worked with bees and mice as well as peas. He bred a hybrid bee type and called bees, “my dearest little animals”
  15. The word honeymoon is actually derived from an ancient European custom where newlyweds would drink a cup of mead (a drink made from honey) every day for a month.
  16. Within a hive, a newly hatched Queen will kill all other hatching and unhatched Queens.
  17. Worker bees will return to the hive once they have discovered a food source and dance to let other bees know where it is. A round dance indicates the food source is close by, while more wiggle indicates the source is distant. A more excited dance indicates large supply levels while a less animated one indicates lower amounts.
  18. Honey bees are being used in the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS). Sufferers of MS are using Apitherapy, where their damaged nerves are being stung by bees to encourage growth and stimulation. Apitherapy also includes the consumption of honeybee products such as Propolis, royal jelly and raw honey.
  19. Bees fly an average of 15 miles per hour. When you hear a bee buzzing that is the sound of its wings. Their wings move at 11,400 strokes per minute.
  20. Bees have been into outer space. In 1984 more than 3000 bees were taken into space on a Challenger flight where they adapted to zero gravity and built an almost perfect honey comb.
And finally, an old wives tale. If a bee enters your house, it means a visitor is on the way. If you kill the bee, the visitor will be unpleasant.