Fun Fact 1: The insect the bee is found on every continent of the world with the exception of Antarctica. It lives in any location that that grows insect-pollinated flowering plants
Fun Fact 2: There are nearly 20,000 known species of bees on the planet
Fun Fact 3: A common honeybee lives in swarms, which is like a bee community, each swarm has its own queen bee, the males bees; also called drones, and numerous worker bees, which are barren females; and will not reproduce
Fun Fact 4: The three different kinds of bee in each hive have unique roles to play; The Queen bee lays eggs, the female worker bees attend to the work in the hive including cleaning, feeding the babies and taking care of the building and repairing of the honeycombs, the male drone bees attend to the work on the outside of the hive collecting the water, pollen and nectar
Fun Fact 5: The largest bee in the world is the Megachile pluto species, it can grow to 39 mm long
Fun Fact 6: The smallest bee in the world is the Trigona minima species, the worker bees are approximately 2.1 mm long
Fun Fact 7: Scientists estimate that approximately 34% of all food production depends on the pollination of plants, which is mostly undertaken by bees
Fun Fact 8: Bees feed on pollen and nectar created from plants. Pollen is the fine powder like substance produced by seed-bearing plants, Nectar is a sweet secretion from flower blossoms - it is the nectar from which honey is made
Fun Fact 9: Fast fact! A honeybee can fly up to 24 km in an hour. Its wings can beat 200 times per second or 12,000 beats per minute!
Fun Fact 10: Bees retrieve nectar from flowers with their proboscis; it works like a long straw-like tongue. To make a pound of honey nectar must be collected from approximately 2 million flowers
Fun Fact 11: What is a Beehive? A beehive is home for a colony of honey bees. Domesticated honey bees generally live in man made beehives, wild honey bees make their own beehives by combining wax with spit and often fibre to create the outer shell of the beehive, other variety of bees have natural beehives or nesting sites in caves, rock cavities and hollow trees
Fun Fact 12: What is a Honeycomb? Honeycomb is the structure that bees make within a beehive. It consists of dense layers of hexagonal cells that the bees produce from wax; the cells are used to contain eggs, larvae, pupae, pollen and honey
Fun Fact 13: Five products are produced within a beehive; Honey, pollen, beeswax, royal jelly (a milky substance that is produced by the worker bees and fed to the queen bee) and propolis (a sap like resin that is used to seal and repair the hive)
Fun Fact 14: Each day a honey bee queen can lay approximately 2000 eggs. The average lifespan of a worker honey bee during the summer is about three to six weeks
Fun Fact 15: Some species of bee are listed as endangered; their survival is at risk due to the use of pesticides, habitat loss, parasites and viruses. Endangered species include the stingless Melipona beecheii and Melipona Yucatanica from the US, there are at least twelve species of bee endangered or under threat in the UK |
