Often the lives of bees are underestimated. Without bees there is no pollination, no crops and no flowers. A bee does so much of nature’s work apart from producing the sweet honey which we relish on in our everyday life. Here are some interesting facts that we all need to know about these wondrous creatures.
- The bees have their own language: Yes, you heard that right. Honey bees make use of one of the most complicated symbolic languages. Honey bees have over a million neurons stored in their tiny brains and they ensure that every single neuron is utilised. Each category of bees has its own set of duties and every bee must perform them efficiently. The code language of bees was deciphered by Karl von Frisch.
- The various kinds of bees: Worker bees are infertile female who come with several responsibilities like constructing hive, food and water collection for the queen and related tasks. Different kinds of worker bees include foragers (mainly responsible for gathering water, pollen and nectar), guards, undertakers (flying the dead bees out) and scouts (look for nectar and communicate the same). Drones are male bees who wait to fertilise the queen eggs and then just die. Queen bee is very important for the hive. A queen bee can lay up to 1500 – 2000 eggs per day almost all her life. The queen bee is so busy laying eggs throughout that most of her chores are done by the attendants.
- Beeswax is made by the youngest worker: The worker bee has eight paired glands on the underside of the abdomen that produce wax droplets. The worker bees then soften the flakes with their mouths to further use it for construction.
- Bees maintain a constant temperature throughout the year: It is believed that honey bees maintain a temperature of 93 degree Fahrenheit. During winter, they get closer to form a tight group so that the hive is warm and in summer the workers flap their wings and fan the air to the queen bee.
- A honey bee makes about 1/12 teaspoons of honey in a lifetime: And to produce about a pound of honey, the bees have to tap about 2 million flowers. At times the bees fly over 55000 miles to collect this amount of honey and not to forget the average speed of 15 miles per hour.
Raika 