Amazing facts about bees. For everyone - educational information about bees and the honey they collect. Unusual facts from the life of bees

The queen in the family is the only full-fledged female with well-developed genitals. From her comes the entire family: worker bees, drones and young queens. The queen is constantly surrounded by worker bees, who look after her: they give her food, clean her body, clean the cells of the honeycombs for laying eggs in them, etc. Bees recognize the presence of a queen in the family by her smell. The queen secretes a special substance, the so-called “uterine substance,” which is licked off by worker bees from the surrounding “retinue.” The smell of this substance is transmitted to all individuals of the bee family due to the constant exchange of food between them. When the uterus dies, the supply of “uterine substance” stops, and its absence is quickly felt by the whole family.
When the queens are inseminated, drone sperm, containing a huge amount of sperm, enters the spermatic receptacle of the uterus, where it is stored throughout her life. The eggs laid by the uterus pass from the ovaries first through the paired oviducts, and then through the unpaired one. If at the same time spermatozoa (8-12 pieces each) penetrate into the mature eggs from the seminal receptacle, then the eggs will be fertilized. If the sperm of the drones does not fall on them, the eggs will remain unfertilized. Consequently, the uterus lays fertilized and unfertilized eggs. Only male drones develop from unfertilized eggs. The latter, therefore, do not have a father and inherit only the property of their mother. From fertilized eggs, queen bees and worker bees develop.
Bees raise queens in large honeycomb cells specially built for this purpose - queen cells. Bees can build them on ordinary bee cells of a honeycomb, in which the queen has previously laid fertilized eggs. Bees rebuild such queen cells after the sudden death of the old queen in order to breed a new one in its place.
If the queens suddenly die and there are no larvae in the nest, the nurse bees consume the food intended for them themselves, which causes them to develop ovaries (each of 3-5, less often 10-20 egg tubes). However, worker bees cannot mate with drones. They also do not have a sperm receptacle to store sperm. Therefore, from the unfertilized eggs laid by such bees, only drones develop. Worker bees with functioning ovaries are called polypores. A family with tinder bees is doomed to gradual extinction if the beekeeper does not provide it with the necessary help in time.
Worker bees do all the work inside and outside the hive. They clean the nest, prepare the honeycomb cells for the queen to lay eggs in, secrete wax and build new honeycombs, feed the larvae, maintain the required temperature in the hive, guard the nest, collect nectar and pollen from plant flowers and bring them to the hive; in a word, worker bees perform all the work related to the life of the bee colony.
“Oven bees” are responsible for the production of heat, which regulate heat production with great precision and are capable of heating up to 44 °C. One such bee, having climbed into a free cell, is capable of providing heat to up to 70 pupae, and in total, depending on the size of the colony, the number of such bees can range from several to several hundred. The temperature at which the pupa developed influences its future “profession”: a pupa developed at 35 °C will become a forager, and at 34 °C it will become a housewife. In addition, the specialization of a bee depends on its innate response to stimuli: individuals that respond to positive stimuli (food) become foragers, and those that respond to negative stimuli (danger) become guards. .To raise a thousand larvae, 100 g of honey, 50 g of pollen and 30 g of water are required. The annual need for pollen is up to 30 kg for each bee colony.

Everyone knows about the benefits brought by little workers - bees. Let's read interesting facts about bees.

All bees are excellent travelers. They unerringly find their way back home, even after flying 8 kilometers away from it.

Once the cold season sets in, worker bees can only live for nine months.

To collect just a kilogram of honey, 4,500 flights of bees are required, during which nectar is collected from 6-10 million flowers. A large and healthy family is able to collect 10-20 kg of nectar per day, yielding from 5 to 10 kg of honey.

To obtain just one spoon of honey (which is 30 g), 400 bees need to work hard. At the same time, one half of them collects pollen, while the other receives and processes nectar in the hive itself.

Residents of Ceylon consider bees to be a delicacy eaten at dinner.

The weight of a normal bee swarm reaches 7-8 kg, and it consists of 50-60 thousand bees. This bee collective has 2-3 kg of honey in its crops. In case of inclement weather, the bees will be able to feed on the honey supply for 8 days.

During the honey harvest season, a strong family of bees travels a distance equal to the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

To raise a thousand larvae you need 100 g of honey, 50 g of pollen from flowers, and 30 g of water. Each bee colony needs up to 30 kg of pollen per year.

Honey is included in the diet of astronauts without fail.

Scientists have found that melittin, a toxin found in bee venom, can stop the spread of HIV in the blood. By destroying the protective shell of the HIV virus, the toxin can kill it. Interestingly, the poison does not harm normal cells.

Speaking of interesting facts about bees, let's remember that our ancestors used bees as weapons. For example, soldiers from the army of Richard the Lionheart threw vessels with swarms of bees into besieged fortresses.

Bees find nectar made from a mixture of sugars much more attractive than nectar made from just one type of sugar. Even at the same concentration.

The honeycomb cell is the most rational natural geometric shape of the vessel. Interestingly, a minimal amount of building material is spent on its construction - only 1.3 g of wax is required per 100 cells. The strength and capacity of such a cell is amazing.

Honeybees recognize human facial features. At the same time, bees capture all elements of the face - lips, eyebrows and ears. The researchers called this process "configurational processing." It is possible that this will help scientists involved in pattern recognition develop their technologies.

A bee not loaded with nectar can reach a speed of 65 km/h.

Statistics show that Americans consume approximately 130 million kg of honey every year. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, bees pollinate 80% of agricultural crops, bringing the country an additional $20 billion annually.

An interesting video about how a flock of bees fight a hornet:

Interestingly, people have been extracting honey from bees since the Stone Age. An ancient painting was discovered in the caves of Cuevas de la Araña in Spain, depicting a man climbing a tree to retrieve honey from a wild hive. This drawing is about 8 thousand years old.

It is not known exactly when bees were domesticated. However, archaeologists have established that in ancient Egypt beekeeping was well known at least from the 3rd millennium BC. The most interesting thing is that this occupation was so honorable that one of the titles of the Egyptian pharaoh was “lord of the bees.”

Bees have an extremely developed sense of smell. They can smell nectar from a kilometer away!

To collect a kilogram of honey, a bee must make about 5 thousand flights, visiting almost 10 million flowers. In this case, it flies over 300 thousand kilometers, which is approximately equal to the length of 6 earth equators. This is an amazing fact!

Bees communicate with each other using special body movements (“bee dances”) and odorous substances - pheromones, which their bodies secrete.

A bee can carry about 50 milligrams of nectar. True, she eats part of the collected nectar during the flight to maintain strength. If the distance it needs to fly is large, then the bee can consume 60-70% of its prey.

When beekeepers fumigate bees with smoke, they do not calm them down at all, as is commonly believed. On the contrary, they are frightening. Bees, taught by thousands of years of evolution, understand that smoke is an indicator of a forest fire, so they evacuate larvae and honey reserves. Since honey is stored in the bee's abdomen, it does not bend, and therefore the insect cannot sting, which is what beekeepers take advantage of.

A bee can move 8 kilometers away from the hive, and then easily find its way back. Another thing is that bees usually don’t fly that far - it costs a lot of energy. The usual working radius of a bee's flight is 2 kilometers. At the same time, it flies over an area of 12 hectares. Naturally, in such a huge area, the bee will almost always find honey plants.

The largest amount of honey per season is brought by Siberian and Far Eastern bees. When linden blossoms in these regions, bees can produce up to 30 kilograms of honey per day. A record collection was recorded in Siberia: as much as 420 kilograms per season.

About half of all bees in a hive are involved in nectar collection. The rest are busy building new honeycombs, caring for offspring, producing honey and other useful things.

A bee is one of the most powerful creatures on the planet. It is capable of lifting into the air a load that is twice its weight. In addition, she can pull an object weighing 20 times more than herself along a flat, smooth surface.

For some reason, the queen bee does not sting a person under any circumstances. But when it meets another queen, it always tries to sting its rival.

The total path taken by honey bees during the honey collection season is approximately 385 thousand kilometers. This distance is comparable to the distance from our planet to the Moon.

An incredible but very interesting fact: there are up to 2 thousand illegal apiaries on the roofs of administrative buildings in London. The most amazing thing is that Londoners themselves don’t even know about it. How the bees (and beekeepers) manage to avoid attracting the attention of the employees working in these buildings remains a mystery.

When a bee flies light, it can reach speeds of up to 65 kilometers per hour. When she carries a load, she does so at a speed of 15-30 kilometers per hour, depending on the severity of the load and the direction of the wind. Interestingly, the bee's wings flap with an incredible frequency: up to 450 beats per second.

Bees can detect explosives and drugs by smell. Therefore, some intelligence agencies actively use specially trained bees. However, interestingly, the opposite happens: bees become drug couriers. In 1985, a huge shipment of Ecuadorian honey containing a significant percentage of cocaine was intercepted in Peru. It turned out that the drug was not dissolved in honey - the “cool” delicacy was made by the bees themselves, which Ecuadorian drug traffickers released over the fields where coca grew.

Well, a final interesting fact about bees: in Japan they almost abandoned the breeding of the local breed of bees in favor of the European one, since it is more honey-bearing. However, Japanese beekeepers are faced with the fact that European bees are absolutely defenseless against Asian hornets that ravage their hives. But local bees have learned to fight the aggressor in a very original way: they gather around the hornet into a ball and actively flap their wings, heating the air inside the ball. The hornet is less resistant to overheating than bees, so it dies from heatstroke.

25.12.2016 0

Everyone is familiar with such an insect as a bee. This eternal worker is endowed with unrivaled internal organization. The literature on beekeeping contains various interesting facts about bees for beekeepers and children.

They will be educational for those who are planning to start their own apiary or are simply interested in these unique insects. After all, bees are the only insects that have managed to interact effectively with people. Let's look at some interesting facts from the life of bees.

Unique capabilities of bees

Bees have all the skills of travelers. They can easily find their way back to their hives from a distance of 8 km.
When cold weather sets in, worker bees have about 9 months to live. In winter, these insects die in their hives, but in summer, a sick bee flies further into the field or forest and dies there.
To collect 1 kg. honey, bees must complete 4,500 flights. During these flights, bees collect nectar from millions of flowers (6–10). One bee colony can collect 10–20 kg. nectar, from which 5 - 10 kg will be formed. honey
One bee can bring 50 grams of nectar. The bee feeds from the nectar it carries. If the hives are located at a considerable distance from the flowers, the bee will eat a significant part of the nectar; she will place only 30–40% of the initial weight of her load in the honeycombs.
To raise a thousand of their own kind (larvae), bees need 100 g of honey, pollen - 50 grams, water - 30 g.
During the year, a bee colony consumes about 30 kg of pollen.
A very interesting, surprising fact from the life of bees is the way they communicate. They don't make sounds. Bees communicate with each other. To do this, they use pheromones and body movements.
The sense of smell in these insects is very developed. They are able to smell the scent of flowers thanks to their receptors from 1 km away.
400 insects take part in producing 1 spoon of honey. Half of them collect pollen, the other half processes nectar inside the hive.
A healthy bee colony manages to fly a very long distance during the honey collection season, which is equivalent to the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
Bee venom is able to kill the HIV virus due to the presence of melitin. This component destroys the protective shell of the virus. At the same time, no negative effects of bee venom on healthy cells of the human body are observed.
In the old days, a swarm of bees was a kind of weapon. Vessels with bees were thrown by the soldiers of Richard the Lionheart onto the fortresses they were besieging.
Bees like to collect nectar not from one type of sugar, but from several types of sugars.
The cells that make up the honeycomb are considered to be the most rational natural geometric shape for a vessel. Their construction requires a minimum of building material. 100 bee cells are made from 1.3 g of wax. The most amazing thing about the cells is their capacity and strength.
A bee without load (nectar) can reach a speed of 65 km/h.
The strength of this insect, whose size does not seem quite large, is surprising. Due to the fact that their body is rough, they hold and carry incredibly heavy luggage. This baby is capable of dragging an object that exceeds its weight by 300 times.

We have looked at the most interesting facts about bees, now it’s our turn to talk about the product they make – honey.

Video: interesting facts - bees.

The most interesting things about honey

Interesting things about such wonderful insects as bees can go on and on. They never cease to amaze and delight us. You can also find very interesting facts about honey.

The amber product, so beloved by many of us, has existed in nature for a very long time. The first information about him is available in a book that dates back 3.5 thousand years ago. This manuscript describes the medicinal uses of honey. They treated diseases of the lungs, dermis, and eyes.

Also a very interesting mention of bees and the product they produce (honey) is a wall painting in the cave. This reference to working insects is found in eastern India and is 15,000 years old.

It is very important to remember the healing properties of this sweet nectar, especially in winter. This product is also used in industries such as cosmetology, medicine, and cooking. What interesting things should we know about honey?

The very name of the beekeeping product comes from Israel. In Russian it means “magic spells”.
An ideal remedy for removing alcohol from the body. It is honey that is recommended to be consumed for a hangover. It can be spread on bread, dissolved in a glass of water. This bee product removes alcohol residues and toxins from the body.
China leads in honey production. But at the same time, it is not as valuable as the beekeeping product brought from Israel. The cost of Israeli honey is over 10,000 rubles per kilogram. At the same time, not all countries allow the import of Chinese honey due to its unnatural nature. In China, bees are usually fed with sweet water, which consequently affects the quality of honey and the condition of the insects themselves.
Honey is considered the best preventative against various colds and some other diseases. It is enough to consume just one tablespoon of this valuable beekeeping product per day.
The healing properties of the sweet delicacy are indispensable in the treatment of liver diseases. It is used for severe intoxication of the body; it is also recommended to use certain varieties during radiation exposure.
Bee gold promotes longevity. This property has been proven by the example of Hippocrates, who consumed this product daily. This ancient doctor managed to live for more than 100 years. What is most interesting is that during that period people did not live more than 40–50 years.
Honey is endowed with wound-healing and disinfectant properties. It was used during World War II to treat wounds of soldiers, because there was a critical shortage of medicines at that time.
Honey from Bashkiria is of high value. It is necessary in the training of astronauts; it saturates their body with all the necessary vitamins and nutrients.
Particular attention should be paid to the value of honey. It is recommended to buy a beekeeping product that bees collected from early flowers.
In ancient Rome, residents used bee product as payment. The Romans used it to pay for food and pay fines with it.
This product is recommended for those who suffer from allergies. It develops resistance to pollen in sick people.
At the moment, Siberia has become a leader in the supply of beekeeping products to Russia.
The preservation of bee sweetness over a long period of time is surprising. At the same time, its beneficial properties are not lost. Archaeologists discovered an amphora with honey after opening the tomb of Tutankhamun. Despite the long shelf life, the beneficial taste qualities of the sweet product remained intact.
This beekeeping product is also associated with the term “honeymoon,” whose roots go back to Norway. There, newlyweds were supposed to drink drinks with honey and eat this product for a whole month.
Poisonous honey. Not surprisingly, this beekeeping product can exist in nature in a poisonous form. The reason for the appearance of toxic, drunken honey is the collection of pollen from plants that are considered poisonous (certain types of heather, wild rosemary, azalea). When consuming a large amount of this product, a person experiences nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, fever, and headaches.

As we can see from everything described above, there are many interesting factors in the life of bees.

Perhaps the bee is the most useful insect on our planet, because thanks to it, people have had the opportunity to enjoy honey since ancient times. Even in ancient times, people learned to specifically breed bees, and the honey obtained with their help has served for centuries as both a favorite sweet treat and medicine, as well as an important ingredient in the creation of alcoholic drinks, such as mead, which was very popular even among our distant ancestors during the times of Kievan Rus. So, since ancient times, the bee has been a faithful friend of man and this is our article for today.

Bee: description, structure, characteristics. What does a bee look like?

According to the zoological classification, the bee belongs to the stinging family, the order Hymenoptera, and its closest relatives are wasps and ants.

The color of the bee is well known; it consists of a black background with yellow spots. But the size of a bee, depending on its type and class, can range from 3 to 45 mm.

The structure of an insect’s body can be divided into three parts:

The head of a bee, which is crowned with two antennae, also has compound eyes with a faceted structure. The eyes of a bee are quite well developed, so they are able to distinguish almost all colors, with the exception of shades of red. The insect's head is also equipped with a special proboscis designed to collect nectar from flowers. The bee's mouthparts have cutting mandibles.
The chest of a bee is equipped with two paired wings of different sizes and three pairs of legs. The bee's wings are connected to each other using small hooks. The bee's legs are covered with villi, which serve for practical purposes - cleaning antennas, removing wax plates, etc.
The bee's abdomen houses the insect's digestive and reproductive systems. There is also a stinging apparatus and wax glands located there. The lower part of the abdomen is covered with long hairs that help retain pollen.

Where do bees live

Bees live over a very wide geographic range, so it's easier to answer where bees don't live than where they do live. So, there are no bees only in those places where there are no flowering plants: hot sandy deserts and cold arctic tundras. In all other places there are bees.

As for the favorite habitats of these insects, they love to settle in mountain crevices, build their hives in the hollows of old trees and earthen burrows. It is important for bees that their habitat is protected from the winds and that there is a body of water nearby.

Lifestyle of bees

Bees are collective insects that live in large families - hives - and have a strict hierarchy and division of labor. The composition of a bee family includes:

uterus,
drone,
worker bee.

In bee society, matriarchy reigns and it is the females who are entirely responsible for ensuring the life of the hive, while the males, also known as drones, exist only to procreate.

The queen bee is the queen of the hive, it is she who is responsible for the reproduction of offspring, she is also the creator of the hive and at first is engaged in its arrangement, until in this matter she is replaced by the worker bees that are born.

The task of male bees, drones, is only one - to fertilize the queen.

The entire economic life of the hive rests with worker bees, female bees incapable of sexual reproduction. They are the ones who hardworkingly collect nectar from flowers, protect the hive in case of danger, arrange its arrangement, transport honey, etc.

How long does a bee live?

The lifespan of a bee directly depends on its place in bee society, as well as the time of birth.

How long does a worker bee live? Her lifespan is not long, and if she was born in spring or summer, it usually averages only a month. Such a short life expectancy is due to the hard work that the worker bee does to obtain nectar.

If a worker bee is lucky enough to be born in the fall, then she can live even six months, since she needs to survive the winter cold in order to be responsible for collecting honey in the spring and take part in its accumulation.

The lifespan of a drone is even shorter than that of a worker bee; two weeks after birth, it already becomes capable of fertilizing the uterus, and what is most interesting is that a few days after this very fertilization, drones usually die. It also happens that with the end of the honey collection period and the onset of winter cold, worker bees at this point drive out the drones that are no longer needed from the hive, after which they also die.

The queen bee lives the longest in the bee community. Typically, the average lifespan of a queen is 5-6 years, but for this she needs to be a valuable female and regularly give birth to new offspring.

What do bees eat?

Bees feed on pollen and flower nectar. Through a special proboscis, nectar enters the crop, where it is processed into honey. By collecting pollen and nectar, bees perform a very important and useful function of pollinating flowers. In search of food, bees can fly up to 10 km per day.

Enemies of bees

Bees also have their own enemies, usually these are other insects, including their closest relatives, wasps and ants, as well. Some birds also make a living by eating bees.

Types of bees

Zoologists have counted 21 thousand species of bees. Also, the bee family includes about 520 genera, the most important of which are galactids, melitids, true bees, and megachilides.

Bee Reproduction

Natural reproduction of bees is carried out by laying eggs by the queen, and she can lay eggs both after fertilization by a drone, and without it, with the difference that drones appear from unfertilized eggs, and full-fledged individuals from fertilized eggs.

The path from an egg to a full-fledged bee goes through several stages: first, the egg turns into a larva, then into a pre-pupa and a pupa, from which an adult bee is already formed.

When a bee colony reaches a large size, it divides - swarming. Some of the bees remain in the old place with the old queen, and some with the new queen go to build and equip a new hive.

Benefits of bees

Bees, among other things, have great medicinal benefits; even their venom in small doses is useful for diseases such as radiculitis, arthritis, and pinched nerves.

Bee breeding

There are many myths and legends associated with bees, for example, according to the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, the soul of the deceased left a person in the form of a bee.
Even primitive people noticed that bee nests were valuable prey, and as a result they hunted for them. But this was a dangerous and difficult task, since the bees could sting the unlucky honey miner to death.
In ancient Greece, beekeepers first learned to insert partitions into bee hives and use them to collect excess honey reserves. And the beginning of “scientific beekeeping” was laid by the great philosopher and scientist of antiquity, Aristotle.
The famous ancient Greek physician Hippocrates wrote a whole scientific treatise on the benefits of honey for human health, and according to legend, a swarm of bees settled on the grave of the famous doctor, producing special healing honey that helps against many diseases.

Bee, video

And finally, an interesting documentary about bees – “Tales from the Hive”.