Interesting and Little-Known Facts about Bees from Candace Savage’s Bees: Nature’s Little Wonders

1. According to a religious text from ancient script, the origins of bees and honey are said to be from the tears of the god, Re.
2. For centuries, many learned authorities preferred to believe that the queen bee was actually a king with an inexplicable predilection for egg-laying.
3. In North America, there are—if you include the honeybee, which was imported from Europe and Africa—4,001 species of bees. The state of New York alone boasts 477 types of bees.
4. Every year, a hive requires 40 pounds of pollen and 250 pounds of nectar. When the nectar is mixed with glandular enzymes and thickened, it amounts to 130 pounds of honey.
5. 1 pound of honey represents the sweetness of 10 million blossoms (that’s the sweetness of 1.3 billion blossoms!).
6. Bees are bilingual—not only do they speak the sensory language of the flower, but they are also capable of abstract communication. Bees can dance to communicate to other bees the distance and location of all resources. The longer the dance—called a “waggle”—the longer the distance of travel.
7. As many as 875,000 bee colonies are estimated to have been lost in the fall and winter of 2006-07, or about 32% of America’s managed bee population.
8. Only 4% of bees are social. Most of the time, bees are loners, even though they appear to be sociable as they zoom to and fro amidst other bees within the hives.
9. In 1914, Professor Karl von Frisch proved to the German Zoological Society that bees are not colour blind, as was originally believed.
10. Unlike the honeybee, most of the world’s diverse species of wild bees have scarcely been studied—an untapped store of wonder.

How doth the little busy Bee
Improve each shining hour
And gather Honey all the day
From every opening Flower!

—Isaac Watts, 1716