What are your favourite bee 'facts'

[whitebark]

I find in marketing honey and bee products that people always love little tidbits about bees, honey etc. What are your favourite bits of info that you use to intrigue customers?

[beesohappy]

Drones (boy bees) don't sting.

[D Coates]

Only females collect honey.

Only females sting

Drones are one shot wonders

Honey bees are not native to the US.

Queens don't have barbs on their stingers.

Queens mate only when young and carry the genetic material gotten from this for the rest of their lives never to mate again

Bees return to their hives at night.

Bees know the smell of their queen.

Bees know the smell of bees from their own hive.

[kramerbryan]

I like the fact that they have different jobs depending on age.

[sqkcrk]

I find in marketing honey and bee products that people always love little tidbits about bees, honey etc. What are your favourite bits of info that you use to intrigue customers?

What are the tidbits you get asked about?

[R.Varian]

10 honey bees weigh about the same as 1 m&m.

[AvatarDad]

10 honey bees weigh about the same as 1 m&m.

I have to admit: I read this and thought "bo-oh-oh-gus!" So I Googled it.

An M&M weighs .9147 grams. A honeybee about a tenth of a gram.

good fact. I'm using this one!

[whitebark]

Oh things like number of flowers it takes to get a pound of honey, distances bees flies, how long they live....lots of bits of info to intrigue the customer.

[Phoebee]

Bees are "warm blooded". Not quite like mammals, but they warm their thoraxes to above human body temperature in order to fly, and considerably hotter than that to ball invaders of their hives. They thermoregulate the broodnest to around 94 F. They don't hibernate, but maintain a cozy warm cluster, using a technique very similar to what Emperor Penguins do. This production of heat is only possible due to the large colonies they produce and their ability to store fuel to do it. It underlies what makes honeybees so amazing.

009.jpg

Most people have heard of the waggle dance, and some may know it conveys geometric information. But few know of the radar studies that show that bees can complete a triangle, navigating from a feeder station location they've used previously to one described to them in a waggle dance, effectively completing a triangle in a navigation solution. And they compensate for movement of the sun during the day. Since most people could not do this, it tends to get their respect.

[blain1976]

I see this is an old thread, however, I believe this to be one that could always be added to, so here goes....

The Queen knows if she's laying a drone or a worker egg.

Workers are from fertilized eggs, Drones are from unfertilized eggs.

Bees have an incredible sense of smell and can be trained to sniff out TNT which is commonly used in Land mines. Because of their light weight, the bees can locate the mines without setting them off.

Worker bees only live for about 6 weeks during the Honey season. The Queen bee can live for about 5 years.