Little River Honey

Sweet Subjects

Fun with Bees

We love to learn about bees and how honey is made and we would like to share some of the information with you. Take a look below at some of the bee facts below and check out the YouTube link for the Buzz on Bees.

Honey bees are the only insects that produce human food.
Honey bees fly at a speed of 9 - 15 mph.
The brain of a worker honey bee is about a cubic millimeter. However, it has the densest neuropile tissue of any animal.
A bee travels an average of 1,600 round trips in order to produce 1 ounce of honey; up to 6 miles per trip.
To produce 2 pounds of honey, bees travel a distance equal to 4 times around the earth.
In one trip a honey bee can visit about 75 and up to 3,000 flowers.

Want to learn more? Check out this video from University of Florida and learn about how bees are the rock stars of insects.

Bee Facts

In a lifetime, on average a honey bee produces 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey. This is about 5 drops.

A bee has to visit about 2 million flowers to collect enough nectar to make a pound of honey.
It will take 1 - 500 flowers to gather a full load of nectar. The number of flowers visited depends on the kind of flower and nectar/pollen production.

Bees from the same hive visit about 225,000 flowers per day.

Sticky Ideas

A bee colony can eat 44 - 65 pounds (20 - 30 kg) per year.
The queen bee is fed every 20 - 30 minutes at peak brood rearing.
The energy in 1 ounce of honey would provide one bee with enough energy to fly around the world.
Beeswax production in most hives is about 1.5 - 2% of the total honey yield.
Forager bees sleep the most of the night.

Design: TEMPLATED Images: Unsplash (CC0)