Honey Bee Facts
The more I find out about honey bee facts, the more I respect this little animal and admire the amazing balance in nature. Even Albert Einstein once said:
“If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live”.
Honey Facts:
• Honey is one of the purest natural foods with antibacterial and antioxidant properties.
• It is fat and cholesterol free, has a 17% of water content and contains a variety of vitamins– thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, B6; minerals– calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, phosphorus, copper; carbohydrates– mainly fructose, glucose and other complex carbs; antioxidants– pinocembrin, vitamin C, chrysin and catalese.
• Pinocembrin antioxidant is only found in honey and no other food. Honey is also the only food that includes all substances necessary to sustain life, including water.
• Honey offers two types of energy: Glucose is absorbed by your body quickly and you get an immediate energy boost, while fructose is absorbed much more slowly providing a longer lasting energy. Honey can help prevent fatigue and boost athletic performance.
• Honey is the nectar that bees have repeatedly regurgitated and dehydrated: Nectar is a sweet liquid substance that are gathered by the honey bees. After nectar is processed in bee’s stomach, it is regurgitated into honeycomb cells. Bees get rid of the excess moisture by fanning the nectar with their wings.
• Honey is one of the safest foods ever, harmful germs and bacteria can not live in it.
• The flower where the nectar was gathered from determines the honey flavour and colour. Colour varies from white to golden or dark brown but no matter what flavour or colour is, honey is equally nutritious, except for mineral value- calcium, phosphorus, iron etc. being higher in darker varieties of honey.
• Honey found in ancient Egyptian tombs was still edible.
• Bears do like the taste of honey but they’d rather have the bee larvae.
Honey Bee Facts:
• A bee flies at a rate of about 15 miles per hour. Their wings flap11,400 times per minute, which is why it sounds like they are “buzzing”.
• Bees are insects with two stomachs, six legs, two pairs of wings, a head, an abdomen and five eyes. They can see ultra violet lights and can perceive movements that are separated by 1/300th of a second.
• Bees are the only insects in the world that make food for humans and they are estimated to be around for thirty million years.
• They must visit 2 million flowers, traveling 55,000 miles on average to be able to make a pound of honey.
• Honey bees account for 80% of all insect pollination and so agriculture depends on bees greatly. Lack of honey bee pollination could result in a significant decrease in the yield of fruits and vegetables.
• 30 – 35% of all foods eaten is derived from honey bee pollination: almonds, melons, cherries, cucumbers, alfalfa, avocados, cranberries, plums, prunes, apples, apricots and more.
• There are three kinds of bees in a hive: Queen, Worker and Drone.
As the only sexually developed female, queen mates with approximately 18 drones, can lay 2000 to 2500 eggs in a day and can live for up to 2 years.
Drones live to mate with the queen, but not more than one in a thousand get the opportunity to mate. They have no other functions in the hive.
The workers are sexually undeveloped females with a life expectancy of roughly 28 to 35 days. They do all the work: Cleaning, feeding the babies, looking after the queen, building honeycombs, guarding the hive, gathering nectar and pollen from flowers, collecting water and propolis.
• It is estimated that 1100 honey bee stings are required to be fatal.
• There are five products that come from the hive: Honey, beeswax, pollen, propolis, and royal jelly.
• And last but not least for the honey bee facts, communication between honey bees is simply by “dancing”, this is how they give direction and information about flowers’ distance to each other. How cool is that!!
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