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Did You
Know ???
 | CLASSIFICATION --
Honeybees have been classified as follows:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Apiidae
Genus: Apis
Species: Apis mellifera |
| A Cornell University paper released in 2000 concluded
that the direct value of honeybee pollination to U.S. agriculture is $14.6
billion annually. We should appreciate honeybees for their honey and
pollination services. 80% of the pollination of the fruits, vegetables and
seed crops in the U.S. is accomplished by honeybees. |
| Bees maintain a temperature of 92-93 degrees Fahrenheit
in their central brood nest regardless of whether the outside temperature is
110 or -40 degrees. |
| Honey bees produce beeswax from eight paired glands on
the underside of their abdomen. |
| Honey bees must consume about 17-20 pounds of honey to
be able to bio-chemically produce each pound of beeswax. |
| Honey bees fly at 15 miles per hour.
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| Honey bees can fly up to 14 kilometers from their nest
in search of food. Usually, however, they fly one or two miles away from their
hive to forage on flowers. |
| A honeybee visits between 50 and 100 flowers during one
collection flight from the hive. |
| Honey bees are entirely herbivorous when they forage for
nectar and pollen but can cannibalize their own brood when stressed.
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| Honey bees are almost the only bees with hairy compound
eyes. |
| A populous colony may contain 40,000 to 60,000 bees
during the late spring or early summer. |
| The honeybee is not born knowing how to make honey; the
younger bees are taught by the more experienced ones. |
| The brain of a worker honey bee is about a cubic
millimeter but has the densest neuropile tissue of any animal.
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| The queen may lay 600-800 or even 1,500 eggs each day
during her 3 or 4 year lifetime. This daily egg production may equal her own
weight. She is constantly fed and groomed by attendant worker bees. The queen may mate with up to 17 drones over a 1-2 day
period of mating flights. The queen stores the sperm from these matings in her
spermatheca, thus she has a lifetime supply and never mates again.
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| In order to produce 1 pound of honey, 2 million flowers
must be visited. |
| A hive of bees must fly 55,000 miles to produce a pound
of honey. One bee colony can produce 60 to 100 pounds of honey per year.
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| An average worker bee makes only about 1/12 teaspoon of
honey in its lifetime. |
| It would take approximately 1 ounce of honey to fuel a
bee's flight around the world. |
| Honey is the primary food source for the bee. The reason
honeybees are so busy collecting nectar from flowers and blossoms is to make
sufficient food stores for their colony over the winter months. The nectar is
converted to honey by the honeybee and stored in the wax honeycomb.
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| Honey is 80% sugars and 20% water. Due to the high level of fructose, honey is 25% sweeter
than table sugar. |
| Honey is nature's energy booster! It provides a
concentrated energy source that helps prevent fatigue and can boost athletic
performance. |
| Honey supplies 2 stages of energy. The glucose in honey
is absorbed by the body quickly and gives an immediate energy boost. The
fructose is absorbed more slowly providing sustained energy. |
| Honey has a long shelf life. No need to refrigerate it.
It can be stored unopened at room temperature in a dry cupboard.
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| Honey is one of the oldest foods in existence. It was
even found in the tomb of King Tut! |
| Honey is created when bees mix plant nectar, a sweet
substance secreted by flowers, with their own bee enzymes.
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| To make honey, bees drop the collected nectar into the
honeycomb and then evaporate it by fanning their wings. |
| Honey has different flavors and colors, depending on the
location and kinds of flowers the bees visit. Climatic conditions of the area
also influence its flavor and color. |
| Honey has been delighting humans for more then 40
centuries. In ancient Egypt, taxes were paid with it, while in early Greece
and Rome honey symbolized fertility, love, and beauty. |
| Honey has been used for millennia as a topical
dressing for wounds since microbes cannot live in it. It also produces
hydrogen peroxide. Honey has even been used to embalm bodies such as that of
Alexander the Great. |
| Honey has the ability to attract and absorb moisture,
which makes it remarkably soothing for minor burns and helps to prevent
scarring. |
| Honey speeds the healing of open wounds and also combats
infection. |
| As recently as the First World War, honey was being
mixed with cod liver oil to dress wounds on the battlefield.
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| Modern science now acknowledges honey as an
anti-microbial agent, which means it deters the growth of certain types of
bacteria, yeast and molds. |
| In 1984, honeybees constructed a honeycomb in zero
gravity as part of an experiment on a space shuttle. |
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