Fun Facts about Bees

* Bees are the only insect in the world that make food that people can eat

* Honey contains all of the substances needed to sustain life, including enzymes, water, minerals and vitamins

* Eating honey can help you smarter! It is the only food to contain ‘pinocembrin’ that is an antioxidant that improves brain function

* One bee will only make 1/12 of a teaspoon on honey in its entire life

* Many plants rely on insects like bees in order to be pollinated; which is why they provide nectar to say thanks

* A colony of bees can contain between 20,000 and 60,000 bees, but only one queen bee

* A bee’s wings beat 190 times a second, that’s 11,400 times a minute!

* Worker bees, who are all female, are the only ones who will attack you, and only if they feel threatened

* It has been estimated that it would take 1,100 bee stings to produce enough venom to be fatal

* Each colony smells different to bees, this is so they can tell where they live!

* It would take 1,100 bees to make 1kg of honey and they would have to visit 4 million flowers

* There are 900 cells in a bee’s brain

* The queen bee will lay around 1,500 eggs a day

* Bees have two separate stomachs; one for food and another just for nectar

* Honey has natural preservatives so that it won’t go bad

* A third of all the plants we eat have been pollinated by bees

* Bees have been around for more than 30 million years

* Bees communicate by smells called ‘pheromones’ and by performing special ‘dances’

* Bee keepers only take the honey that the bees do not need, but this can be as much as 45kg from one hive!

* There are lots of different types of honey which taste different depending on the flowers used to make it