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Saturday, September 19, 2009

It's National Honey Month


Interesting Facts About Honeybees
1. Honeybees are one of science's great mysteries because they have remained unchanged for 20 million years, even though the world changed around them.
2. Bees have been producing honey for at least 150 million years.
3. The true honeybee was not known in the Americas until Spanish, Dutch, and English settlers introduced it near the end of the 17th century.
4. Did you know that bees have 4 wings?
5. The honeybee's wings stroke 11,400 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz.
6. A bee flies at a rate of about 12 miles per hour.
7. How many eyes does a honeybee have? Five.
8. Honeybees communicate with one another by "dancing".
9. The queen bee is the busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength. She will lay about 1,000 to 1,500 eggs per day.
10. In the cold winter months, bees will leave the hive only to take a short cleansing flight. They are fastidious about the cleanliness of their hive.
11. Honeybees do not die out over the winter. They feed on the honey they collected during the warmer months and patiently wait for spring. They form a tight cluster in their hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.
12. It takes 35 pounds of honey to provide enough energy for a small colony of bees to survive the winter.
13. Honeybee colonies have unique odors that members flash like identification cards at the hive's front door. All the individual bees in a colony smell enough alike so that the guard bees can identify them.

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