A healthy bee colony has up to 50,000 workers, 2,000 drones and one queen at the height of the summer.
Bees keep the heart of the colony at a constant 35-37 degrees Centigrade throughout the year. The average honeybee colony will consume 40 kilos of pollen in a year.
The average honeybee colony will consume 40 kilos of pollen in a year.
A queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs in a day during spring and summer.
A queen can live up to five years.
Male drones do not work in the hive, or make honey.Their main function is to mate with a queen.They are killed by the workers at the onset of winter.
A bee flies at 13-15 mph which is quite slow for an insect.
A honeybees’ ‘cruising height’ is 12 feet above the ground.
A worker bee lives for about six weeks in the summer and longer over winter.
A worker bee spends the first three weeks of life in the hive ending the queen, feeding larvae, cleaning and guarding the entrance.It then becomes a forager bringing stores back to the hive.
A bee flies up to 3 miles from the hive on its foraging missions.
Forage trips last about 40 minutes or less if sufficient nectar, pollen, or water is found.
A bees’ honey-stomach is the size of a pinhead.It may need to visit 1,000 flowers to fill it.
It takes twelve bees a lifetime to produce 1 teaspoonful of honey.
Honeybees visit about 2 million flowers to make a pound of honey.
A bee will average ten forage trips a day.
The bee ‘buzz’ is made by their wings beating over 11,000 times per minute.