Honey Bee Information

"Free Range Bees"

Rohe Bee Ranch

Honey Bee Information

· Early beekeeping records were found in cave paintings in Spain around 6000 BC.

· The discovery of “Bee Space” by L.L. Langstroth in 1851 lead the way to modern beekeeping.

· The scientific name for the honey bee is – Apis mellifera.

· A normal, strong colony of honeybees may contain 60,000 or more.

· The vast majority of bees in a beehive are female. In fact all the worker bees and the queen bee are female. There are only a few hundred or so male “drone” bees in the colony at any one time. 1 Queen per colony.

· Drones are created from unfertilized eggs and their sole purpose in life is to mate with a Queen honeybee and then they die. They even have to be fed by worker honeybees.

· Queen honeybees can live up to 6 or even 8 years. Workers only live for 42 - 43 days.

· Queens hatch in 16 days, workers in 21 days, and drones in 24 days.

· A beehive is natures cleanest environment.

· Honey will never spoil.

· Honeybees gather nectar for carbohydrates and pollen for protean.

· The taste and color of honey is determined by the nectar source.

· A field bee can visit 10 flowers a minute and may visit over 600 flowers per trip from the hive.

· A field bee can visit up to 10,000 flowers in one day, but all the nectar she collects in her lifetime will only make about 1 teaspoon of honey.

· To make 1 pound of honey a colony of honeybees collects nectar from over 1,000,000 flowers.

· Products from honeybees include: Honey (Sweetener, bee food), Beeswax (Candles, cosmetics, comb), Propolis (cosmetics, medical, polish), and Pollination (agriculture, bee food)

Quick Honey Bee Facts