The Honey Bee

 The Honey Bee

Honey bees are the only insects that produce food that is

consumed by humans - honey. They are social insects. A colony

of bees includes a queen, drones, and workers. There is only one

queen per hive. She is the largest bee in the colony and may live

up to five years. She will lay up to 2500 eggs per day and has the

ability to control whether she lays male or female eggs.

If the queen dies, the workers vwill create a new queen by

selecting a young larva and feeding it a special food called

"royal jelly". This will enable the larva to develop into a fertile

queen.

All worker bees are females; they cannot reproduce and live for

about six weeks. A colony can have 50,000- 60,000 workers who

collect nectar to make honey. An average worker bee produces

about 1/12h of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. A hive of bees

will fly 90,000 miles and visit an average of four million flowers to

collect 1 kg of honey. A bee visits between 50 and 100 flowers

during one collection flight from the hive. They dance to

communicate the direction and distance of flowers.

Drones are the male bees that have no stingers. The drones are

forced out of the hive if the colony is short of food. Bees have five

eyes and four wings. A bee's wings stroke 1l,400 times per minute,

thus making their distinctive buzz.