Bees collect 66 pounds of pollen per year, per hive.

Honey is used by bees for food all year round. There are many types, colors and flavors of honey, depending upon its nectar source.

Bees make honey from the nectar they collect from flowering trees and plants.

Honey is an easily digestible, pure food. Honey is hydroscopic and has antibacterial qualities. Eating local honey can fend off allergies.

Secreted from their glands, beeswax is used by honeybees to build honeycombs.

The powerful, milky substance that turns an ordinary bee into a Queen Bee is called Royal Jelly. It is made of digested pollen and honey or nectar mixed with a chemical secreted from a gland in a nursing bee’s head.

 

Honeybees are not native to the United States. They are European in origin, and were brought to North America by the early settlers.

Honeybees are not aggressive by nature, and will not sting unless protecting their hive from an intruder or are unduly provoked.

Honeybees represent a highly organized society, with various bees having very specific roles during their lifetime: e.g., nurses, guards, grocers, housekeepers, construction workers, royal attendants, undertakers, foragers, etc.

The practice of honey collection and beekeeping by humans dates back to the stone-age, as evidenced by cave paintings. The honeybee hive is perennial.

Although quite inactive during the winter, honeybees survive the winter months by clustering for warmth. By self-regulating the internal temperature of the cluster, the bees maintain 93° F in the center of the winter cluster (regardless of the outside temperature).

There is only one queen bee per hive.

After mating with male (drone) bees, a queen bee lays up to 2,000 eggs per day. Fertilized eggs become female (worker bees) and unfertilized eggs become male (drone bees).

A queen bee remains fertile all her life.

All worker bees are female, but they are not able to reproduce. Only the queen bee can reproduce.

Nearly all of the bees in a hive are worker bees. A hive consists of 20,000 to 30,000 bees in the winter, and over 60,000 to 80,000 bees in the summer.

Worker bees (females) sequentially take on a series of specific chores during their lifetime: housekeeper, nursemaid, construction worker, grocer, undertaker, guard, and finally, after 21 days they become a forager collecting pollen and nectar. For worker bees, it takes 21 days from egg to emergence.

The worker bee has a barbed stinger that results in her death following stinging, therefore, she can only sting once.

Drones (male bees) do not have stingers.

The queen bee grows 1½ times larger than the ordinary bee, and is capable of laying up to 2,000 eggs a day.

The Queen Bee lives 40 times longer than bees on a regular diet.

There is no difference between a queen bee and a worker bee in the larval stage. The only factor that is different between them is that a developing queen bee continues to eat only Royal Jelly (a powerful, milky substance that turns an ordinary bee into a queen bee).