Facts on Honey Bees
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Honey bees are the only insects that produce a food consumed by humans.
A colony contains one queen, 500 to 1,000 drones and about 30,000 to 60,000 workers.
Nurtured on a special diet of royal jelly, the queen is the only sexually developed female in the hive. A few days after hatching, the queen mates with drones in flight. The drones, which are stout male bees that lack stingers, fulfill their single purpose in the colony by mating with the queen.
During this "mating flight," the queen receives millions of sperm cells that last her entire life -- often two years or more. A productive queen will lay up to 3,000 eggs in a single day.
The sexually undeveloped female bees perform the work of the colony. Once hatched, these worker bees do a sequence of jobs - cleaning the nursery, caring for and feeding the larvae, collecting nectar, making wax comb, guarding the hive and fanning their wings to keep the hive cool.
- Yeah, female slaves - that figures...
To make a pound of honey, worker bees must forage nectar from millions of flowers.
On average, a colony will produce about 80 pounds of surplus honey each year.
[H]oney contains a wide array of vitamins, such as vitamin B6, thiamin, niacin, riboflavin and pantothenic acid. Essential minerals including calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and zinc as well as several different amino acids have been identified in honey.
