Here are 10 fascinating facts about honeybees.
1. Honeybees are the main insects that produce food for humans. Humans harvest from ants.
2. Bees maintain an average temperature of 92-93 degrees Fahrenheit in their central brood nest, whether the outside temperature is 110° or -40°.
3. Honeybees are entirely herbivorous when they forage for nectar and pollen but can cannibalize their own brood when stressed.
4. Honeybees use dance and their sense of smell to communicate.
5. A honeybee’s two wings beat 250 times a second and she twists them for maximum lift.
6. The brain of a worker honeybee is about a cubic millimeter but has the densest neuropile tissue of any animal.
7. The queen bee keeps a lifetime supply of sperm in her spermatheca from her first and only mating session)
8. Worker bees, produced from fertilized eggs, have a full (double) set of chromosomes; males, or drones, produced from unfertilized eggs, have a single set of chromosomes.
9. The average sister bee lives six weeks in the summer and six months in the winter; queens live from two to eight years.
10. With nine beehives for every square kilometer, Greece has one of the largest bee populations in the world and is the European Union’s third-largest honey maker, producing 14,000 tons every year!
Maryam Henein is an investigative journalist, professional researcher, and producer of the award-winning documentary Vanishing of the Bees.
Find out more about Maryam….
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