Interesting facts about the honey bee

*Bees have a body temperature of 92-93 degrees Fahrenheit in their nest, no matter what the outside temperature is.

*A honeybee would have to fly about 55,000 miles to bring in enough nectar to make one pound of honey.

*It would take a honeybee approximately 1,600 round trips (hive to flower and back to hive again) in order to produce one ounce of honey.

*Honeybees will fly as far as 8 miles from their nest in search of food, at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour.

*The brain of a worker honeybee is about one cubic millimeter, approximately the size of the head of a pin.

*Honeybees’ wings stroke 11,400 times per minute and cause a buzzing noise.

*A honeybee would have to visit 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey.

*A honeybee worker visits more than 2,000 flowers on a busy day.

*The average honeybee worker makes 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.

*Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans.

*Queen bees will lay as many as 2,000 eggs on a good day, an average of one every 45 seconds.

*Honey has been used for thousand of years as a dressing to help heal wounds.

*In ancient Egypt, people valued honey so highly that it was often used to pay debts.

*In ancient Greece, people offered honey as a tribute to the gods and to spirits of the dead.

*When the first European settlers arrived in North America, they used honey to make cement and furniture polish and to preserve fruits.

*On a hot summer day, the worker bees keep the hive cool inside by fanning their wings.

*The cells of a honeycomb tilt slightly upward so the honey won't spill out.

*At the turn on the 20th century there were more than 5 million bee hives in the USA, by 2006 that number had fallen to less than 2.5 million.

*Almond pollination creates an almond crop that adds over 1.5 billion dollars of revenue to California. It takes 2 million hives of honey bees to pollinate this crop annually.

*There can be as many as 60,000 bees in a colony during the nectar harvest.

*Flower nectar is 80% water, while cured honey must have a water content of less than 18.6% water to stop fermentation.

*Honey bees have over 60 scent receptors in the antennae and more in their feet.