•Honeybees may make 10,000,000 trips to gather enough nectar to make a single pound of honey. The total distance traveled by all the bees to create this much honey may equal twice the distance around the world. Their activity for this single pound of honey means a total distance flown of 55,000 miles and over 2,000,000 flowers visited.
•Honeybee workers move to different jobs as they grow older: Week #1 – clean the hive.Week #2 – feed the larvae. Week #3 – do repair work on the honeycomb cells.Week #4 – guard the hive. Week #5 and beyond – collect pollen and nectar from flowers.
• The term “honeymoon” comes from the Middle Ages, when a newly married couple was provided with enough honey wine to last them for the first month of their new life together.
When searching for food sources a honeybee may travel up to 60 miles in a single day.
•Only female bees and wasps can sting. Males do not have the egg-laying “ovipositor” that is modified as the stinger on female insects.
•Honeybees have 2 compound eyes and 3 simple eyes, for a total of 5 eyes. The compound eyes have around 6,900 “facets”, giving them excellent eyesight.
•The wings of honeybees beat over 11,000 cycles per minute, but their average flying speed is only around 15 miles per hour.
•Wasps feed on sweet liquids, and some that have been feeding on fermenting juice have been observed, eventually, to get drunk and pass out.
•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.