Curious facts about bees
Page 14 (Facts about Honeybees)
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A male honeybee (called a drone) has a grandfather but no father. (Drones are hatched from unfertilised eggs. Female, worker bees, are hatched from fertilised eggs.) 1
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Honeybees pass on information to each other about the the location of food sources by dancing. The angle at which they dance on the comb indicates the direction of the food. The amount the bee wiggles indicates the distance.
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In the Schafberg Experiment (named after the mountain) honeybees were placed on a mountain that they cold fly around but not over. The only food source was on the opposite side of the mountain. When the bees returned to the hive from feeding they indicated the direction of the food in a straight line across the mountain, at an angle they had never flown. The distance that they communicated was the distance they had flown around the mountain.
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Honeybees cannot see the colour red.
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Honeybees have five Eyes: two large compound eyes and three smaller ocelli eyes.
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Honeybees fly about 55,000 miles to make one pound of honey. The circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles.
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A queen bee only mates at one time in her life. She holds sufficient sperm from the male drones to lay eggs for 3-5 years.
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Male honeybees (drones) die in the process of mating.
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Female worker honeybees die after stinging humans. This is because the barbed stinger remains lodged in the victim's skin causing the bee's abdomen to tear apart when it tries to extract itself or is sawtted away. It is the tearing of the abdomen and not the sting which kills the bee.
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Drones can't sting.
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Worker bees (females) have more genes in common with their sisters (75%) than they do with either their mother or their on sons or daughters (50%). 2
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Queen bumblebees eat their own grandchildren. 2
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Australian tomatoes are pollinated by hand because (at the time of writing, 2013) they don’t have bumblebees in Australia (apart from in Tasmania). 2
1.
Most of the facts on this page pertaining to honeybees are taken from The British Beekepers' Association website: www.britishbee.org.uk
2.
A sting in the tale, Dave Goulson. Jonathan Cape, 2013.
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