Interesting Bee Facts

1. There are around 250 different species of bee in the UK – and about 25,000 worldwide! The Western honeybee is just one of those. Some species are solitary bees and others live in colonies.
2. There are more bees in the world than stars in our galaxy!
3. Bees are essential to human existence as they ensure 85% of our crops are pollinated. It has been estimated that without bees, humans would run out of food within 4 years.
4. Many bee species are endangered - especially at risk from pesticides.
5. While honeybees are not endangered in the same way as other bees, they are under threat from pesticides, mites and more recently the Yellow Legged Asian Hornet.

The Honeybee

1. The Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) is the only species of bee in the UK which produces and stores the honey which humans consume. There are different subspecies of honeybee around the world which have evolved and adapted to local conditions.
2. The honeybees make their honey from nectar which has been gathered from plants and is mixed with enzymes from the bees' bodies, then stored in wax cells and dehydrated to stop it from fermenting. It is then capped over with wax until required - eg when other sources of nectar are unavailable. The bees usually produce much more honey than they actually need - hence why we can take some for ourselves!
3. A single honeybee will produce less than ¼ teaspoonful of honey in her lifetime, while one hive can produce anything from zero to 50+ jars of honey a year.
4. A honeybee colony will contain about 10,000 bees in the winter to 50,000 in the summer. The colony usually consists of several thousand worker bees (all female), a few hundred drones (male bees), and just one queen.
5. Workers take on different roles and adapt depending on current need - nurses, cleaners, foragers, water carriers, undertakers, guards, scouts, and more.
6. Honeybees communicate using waggle dances and pheromones.
7. Their waggle dance tells other bees where to find good forage and how to get there in relation to the position of the sun.
8. Pheromones reassure the colony that the queen is present, attract nurse bees to look after the eggs and larvae, alert one another to intruders and tell others that they need to assist when the hive is under attack.
9. The queen goes on mating flights in the first couple of weeks of her life and then stores that sperm in her body to use for the rest of her life. She can lay more than a 1000 eggs per day during the peak of the Spring/Summer and she decides if an egg will be female (fertilized) or male (unfertilized).
10. Drones' only task is to go out and mate in mid-air with queens from other colonies. Most don’t succeed, but those ‘lucky' enough to do so will plummet to the ground after copulation and die having had their genitalia ripped out! Drones that survive the summer are pushed out of the hive in the autumn to die as they are no longer needed and are a drain on resources.
11. In the spring, a honeybee colony will quickly expand in numbers and will often swarm, which is part of their natural reproductive process. Swarming is where approximately half the colony (around 25K bees) will leave with the queen and go in search of a new home. The remaining bees will rear themselves a new queen. Meanwhile, the departing swarm will initially gather in a clump somewhere for a few hours while the scout bees go in search of a cavity somewhere; it might be an empty manmade hive, but they're just as happy with a cavity in an old tree, or a chimney, or a gap in your roof space! Once found, they will all fly in using pheromones to keep the swarm together and create a new nest from wax comb where they store pollen & nectar and the queen will lay eggs to expand the new colony.
12. If you come across a swarm, perhaps on a tree, in a hedge, or on a gatepost, you may be able to contact a local beekeeper to come and take it away for you - preferably before it moves into your chimney! They can usually help if it is less than 6 ft off the ground. Just enter the relevant post code into the following page and get in touch https://www.bbka.org.uk/find-a-local-swarm-collector
13. Honeybees do not hibernate over winter; instead they cluster inside the hive to keep warm.
14. Workers live for just 6 weeks in the summer, but up to 6 months over winter. The queen can live for up to 4-5 years, but is usually superseded after a year or two.
15. A honeybee worker sting has a barb on it, so once used it is pulled from the bee's body and the bee dies. The sting includes a venom sack which continues to pump for 15 secs when detached from the bee. So if you ever get stung, it's a good idea to scrape your nail across the sting to remove it asap.