Honey Bee Facts: The Origin of the Honey Bee

In the early 1500s, European colonists took the honeybee with them while exploring the New World. The Native Americans called the honeybees 'White man's flies'. There used to be a species of honeybee in North America, but it died out roughly fourteen million years ago. I have some pretty interesting honey bee facts surrounding these amazing little workers.

• There are many species of bee that are called honeybees. The scientific name for them is Apis Mallifera. Numerous sub species of the honey bee are found on a global level, but the most famous is the European honeybee. Honeybee subspecies can also be found at the bottom of South America and in the northern most parts of Sweden.
• Bees allow in helping the world to grow. When flying from the flowers to their hives, these hard little workers pollinate the plants, encouraging them to grow and produce. The USA alone reaps the benefits of about $10 billion from food crops every year.
• There are thousands of different types of bees, but the best-known are the honeybees because they thrive around people as well as their plants. Sadly, all honeybee species are suffering from CCD, or colony collapse disorder. This is probably due to chemical fertilizers and possible climate change.
• All worker honeybees are females. And the males? They do not even know how to feed themselves. The only reason they stay inside the hive is to mate with their queen. Male bees do not sting, and when fall comes they leave the hive because there is no use for them anymore.
• Each hive has one queen that will live for two to three years. Worker bees only live for up to six weeks. Rather than being born a queen, she is actually made into one. Royal jelly is fed to the larvae through the antennas of the worker bees. There is an abundance of nutrients within the royal jelly that it allows the larvae to grow into queens. Because only one queen is allowed in a hive, all of the prospective queen bees fight to their death until only one remains.
• Honeybees are exceptionally clean. They make their hives hexagon by perfect hexagon and it is kept immaculately clean. The queen is the only bee that never leaves their hive, so the hive is her bathroom. However, her faithful worker bees dispose of her mess straight away. When it is time for the bees to die, they make sure that they are outside the hive.
• Other interesting fact about honey bees is that the honeybee is the only insect that makes honey. A bumblebee makes a substance that resembles honey in small quantities, but does not taste like real honey. Honey bees make plenty of honey so that when a beekeeper takes some for human use he does not hurt the bees or deprive them of their special food.
• The only insect that produces something that a human can eat is the honeybee! Honey will also never go bad. When King Tut’s tomb was opened up they found edible honey inside!
• A honeybee never sleeps. Together with working so hard, it is no wonder their lifespan is so short.
• About 2000 eggs are laid by the queen every day. She is also able to choose the gender within the larvae. Mostly females are produced. The brain of a queen bee is smaller than that of a worker bee.
• During its lifetime, an average honeybee produces 1/12th a teaspoon honey. Two million flowers and 556 workers produce a pound of honey. For that one pound honey, honeybees from one hive will fly about 55,000 miles collectively gathering pollen and nectar from those 2 million flowers. During a single collection trip there will be 50 to 100 flowers that are pollinated within a one to two mile radius. A honeybee will be able to fly right around the earth with just an ounce of honey to give it enough energy. However, the furthest they will fly from their hives is normally six miles.
• The stinger of a honeybee is barbed. When an animal or person is stung by a bee, the stinger will hook and stay in the skin and rips out of the honeybee. After this, the bee then dies. However, if an enemy insect is stung by the honeybee the stinger will rip through the enemy insect and still stay in the honeybee. The bee does not die.
• Honeybees fly at fifteen miles per hour and their wings beat roughly 11,000 cycles per minute.
• In springtime and summertime worker honeybees live for more or less four weeks. They live slightly longer when the weather is cooler.
• Besides producing honey, honeybees also pollinate more than ninety different kinds of food crops. These include onions, clover, strawberries and almonds. The crops are pollinated by the honeybee when it flies from one flower to the next, all the while gathering pollen with their legs. Average honeybee colonies can each make 11 kilograms or 25 pounds of honey each year to harvest for humans.
• A honeybee lives in huge colonies with a population that varies from hundreds up to 50,000. Bees have been called "superorganisms". These are interdependent organisms that act as one unit.
• Eighty percent of pollination within nature is done by the honey bee. So, the next time that you eat a fresh vegetable or fruit, thank the hard working honey bee.

It is thanks to the honeybee that we can still enjoy a naturally pure food source that is derived from this little miracle of nature. It is unfortunately becoming harder to find a food source that has not been tainted with chemicals and preservatives and is not 100 percent natural.