Bees

Bees can tell if a flower has recently been visited by another bee by detecting special scent marks!

Worker bees share food with their nestmates by passing nectar mouth-to-mouth, called trophallaxis!

Fun and Unique Facts

One out of every three bites of food we eat depends on bees for pollination!

Bees help produce over 90 different kinds of crops, including apples, almonds, and strawberries!

A single bee colony can pollinate up to 300 million flowers each day!

The buzz of a bee’s wings creates a positive electrical charge that helps pollen stick to their bodies!

A queen bee can store sperm from male bees for her entire lifetime!

The largest bee in the world is Wallace’s giant bee, which is as big as your thumb!

The smallest bee in the world is the Perdita minima, which is smaller than a grain of rice!

Bees never sleep more than 5–8 hours in a 24-hour period!

A single bee colony can produce up to 100 pounds (45 kg) of honey in a good year!

Bees are usually gentle and only sting to protect their hive or if they feel threatened!

Only female bees, known as worker bees, can sting. Male bees, called drones, do not have stingers.

Bees are more interested in flowers than in people — they won’t bother you if you don’t bother them!

If you see a bee, stay calm and slowly walk away — running or swatting may make them defensive!

Bees release a special scent when they’re alarmed to warn other bees of danger!

Most people who get stung by bees are trying to swat them or step on them!

Beekeepers use special smoke to calm bees because it masks their alarm signals!

Different species of bees have different levels of defensive behavior!

The best way to avoid bee stings is to wear light-colored clothing and avoid sweet perfumes!

A honeybee belongs to the scientific family Apidae, and its scientific name is Apis mellifera, which means “honey-bearing bee” in Latin!

A worker honeybee can visit up to 2,000 flowers in a single day to collect nectar and pollen.

Worker bees pass nectar to each other mouth-to-mouth up to 200 times before it becomes honey!

Honeybees eat about 14 to 27 kilograms (30 to 60 pounds) of honey each year to keep their colony strong and healthy!

Honeybees beat their wings about 11,400 times per minute, which translates to about 190 times per second.

The color and flavor of honey depends on which types of flowers the bees visited!

There are over 100 million beehives around the world!

Pesticides called neonicotinoids can confuse bees and make them forget how to find their way home!

A single honeybee colony can pollinate up to $20,000 worth of crops in one year!

Some farmers now use special apps to rent honeybee colonies to pollinate their crops!

Honeybees can fly at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour (32 km/h)!

Honeybees use the sun as a compass and can navigate even on cloudy days!

A colony of bees will fly about 55,000 miles (88,514 km) to make just one pound of honey!

When finding a new home, honeybees can measure the size of potential nest sites!

Honeybees can detect electric fields produced by flowers!

Honeybees communicate through special pheromones, with each colony having its own unique scent!

Honeybees make decisions as a group through a process similar to human democracy!

Bees use their antennae to “smell” each other’s emotions!

Honeybees hold “cleaning parties” where they work together to keep their hive spotless!

The most expensive honey in the world costs over $6,800 per kilogram!

The longest recorded life of a queen bee was 8 years!

The heaviest honey harvest from a single beehive was 762 pounds! That’s a lot of honey for one hive to make in just one year.

The longest recorded distance traveled by a foraging honeybee was 13.7 kilometers!

Within the first week of life, a queen bee will take a special flight to mate with up to 15 drone bees!

The larva of a honeybee grows to 1,500 times its original size in just 5 days!

Worker bees are super busy taking care of the queen bee! They feed her a special food called royal jelly, and they do this a lot — about 1,500 times every day!

During winter, honeybees form a special cluster and vibrate their flight muscles to generate heat!

Honeybees have special relationships with flowers called “flower fidelity,” where they visit the same type of flower over and over!

Bees use landmarks like trees and buildings to create mental maps of their territory!

When it rains, honeybees can predict the weather and will stay in their hive!