60 Interesting Facts about Bees

That bees make honey and collect nectar and pollen is not a secret! Did you know that there are many more interesting facts about bees that you probably do not know? We have compiled a list of 60 interesting facts about bees. Why not test your knowledge about bees and see how many facts you know!

General Facts

1. There are over 20 thousand known species of bees

2. The oldest bee is 100 million years old and its fossil is perfectly preserved in amber

3. Bees and Dinosaurs lived together for at least 35 million years

4. 85 to 90% of all crops humans consume are pollinated by bees

5. Only 10% of all species are ‘social’ meaning they live in swarms

6. Not all bees sting – There are there are 500 species of stingless bees worldwide

7. Less than 5% of all bee species can actually make honey

8. 90% of all bees live a solitary life

9. There are no bees in Antarctica but they live anywhere where flowers grow

10. Without bees, humans would only have four years left to live according to Einstein

11. Every social bee colony consists of 1 queen, 100’s of drones, and between 20-80,000 workers

12. Honeybees kill more people each year worldwide than all poisonous snakebites put together (due to allergies)

13. Bees pollinate over 80% of crops and wild plants in Europe alone. In the U.S., over 100 commercially grown crops (1/3 of all crop production) require insect pollination

14. The total economic value of pollination worldwide comes to 153 billion Euros (2009 study)

Anatomy Facts

15. Bees have almost half (10,000) as many genes as the human (20,000) genome

16. The yellow and brown stripes are a warning to predators

17. Bees have 5 eyes (2 large compound eyes and 3 smaller ocelli eyes in the centre of its head)

18. Bees can fart.. They have a digestive tract and can get indigestion

19. After they sting a person a honeybee dies

20. Honeybees can remember individual human faces

21. Those little honeybees can hold grudges; they chase and attack intruders for up to 50 yards

22. According to a scientific study, honeybees like music. Their favorite genre is  “bee-bop”

23. Vinegar kills bees almost instantly

24. Honeybees don’t like lavender, citronella, olive and vegetable oil, lemon, and lime

25. Queen bees generally only have one mating flight with several matings in their life.

26. A queen can store up to 100 million sperm and uses it throughout her life.

27. A Honeybee’s egg is the size of a grain of rice

28. Honeybees can measure flight speed with their antennas

29. A queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day

30. Honeybees are always active. They do not hibernate during cold periods

31. They communicate through dance and pheromones. Wiggling or circling indicates how close a food source is, pheromones pass on other messages

32. A swarm of bees can relocate in 24 hours to a new nesting site

33. Honeybees have a heart and an aorta

34. The blood of honeybees doesn’t clot

35. Honeybees use their smell to protect their hives. They can interpret scents with fear and emit scents to warn others

36. Smoke interferes with the bees ability to smell danger and calms them down

37. Honeybees are deaf but can still respond and feel noise

38. Cheers! Honeybees can get drunk. Fermented food can have a similar effect to alcohol in humans. Alcohol is a deadly sin for bees. When a bee returns to the hive drunk, the other bees attack it and chew off its legs

39. Honeybees breathe through their bodies because they have no lungs

Honey Facts

40. A single bee produces about 1 tablespoon of honey during its lifetime

41. To produce ½ lbs of honey 30,000 bees need to travel 27,500 miles and visit over 1 million flowers

42. The honeybees collected from Rhododendron flowers is a hallucegenic (Shiva Honey, Red or Mad Honey)

43. Honeybees cannot get high from cannabis

44. Mad honey is illegal in some countries (India, Mexico, Brazil, Canada & Australia)

45. There are over 300 different types of honey, each one has its own health and nutritional benefits

46. Most bacteria and other microbes cannot grow or reproduce in honey

47. Honey is the only food created by insects

48. In Hinduism, honey is considered one of the 5 Elixiers of immortality

49. The Hindu gods for the Moon (Soma) and Krishna are depicted as bees

50. Apples dipped in honey symbolize the new year in jewish traditions

51. The promised land was called the land of milk and honey in the bible

52. The medicinal properties of honey are known more than 5,000 years

53. Honey is not recommended for babies up to 12 months old because in can cause toxins in their intestines

54. The most expensive honey in the world is Elvish honey from Turkey. In 2009, 1 kg of Elvish honey sold for 45,000 Euros at the French Stock Exchange. 1 kg (4.5 ounces cost 5,000 Euros ($6,800 USD)

55. Honey never goes bad or expires even though honey jars have a sell-by date

56. The rarest honey in the world is from Pitcairn because there is no pollution on the island

57. Manuka honey has more antibacterial properties than any other honey in the world

58. Honey contains about 79-80% sugar

59. The average ph of honey is 3.9 but can range from 3.4 to 6.1 depending on the type of honey

60. 1 tablespoon of honey has 64 calories