Discovering the Fascinating World of Honeybees at Pualani Bee Farm

We recently hosted 17 students—ranging from 5th to 9th graders—at Pualani Bee Farm for an educational tour and honey tasting. During this engaging experience, we taught these wonderfully inquisitive young people about beekeeping. We also provided them with a sheet of fun facts about honeybees. Some of these facts are truly surprising!

Amazing Facts About Honeybees

Honeybees have been around for about 100-150 million years. They evolved from predatory wasps. The earliest evidence of humans eating honey comes from cave paintings in Spain, dating back about 15,000 years. However, humans only learned to harvest honey around 8,000 years ago.

When King Tutankhamen’s tomb was opened in 1922, archaeologists found jars of honey that were 3,000 years old and still edible. As long as honey is stored airtight, it will never go bad.

A field bee will visit between 50 and 100 flowers on a single foraging trip. Honeybee wings beat 11,400 times per minute, producing a buzzing sound that tends to be in the key of C.

A worker bee produces only about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her entire life. To produce just one pound of honey, foraging bees from a single hive must visit about 2 million flowers and fly around 55,000 miles. This distance is roughly equivalent to flying around the Earth along the equator twice.

One-third of human food is made possible by bee pollination. The honeybee is the most frequent single species of pollinator worldwide.,for%20crops%20worldwide%20%5B2%5D.) Honeybees are the only insects that produce food consumed by humans.

Honeybees produce honey as food stores for the hive during winter. Luckily for humans, these efficient little workers produce 2-3 times more honey than they need, so we get to enjoy this tasty treat too!

Did you know that honey is 25% sweeter than sugar? Interestingly, honeybees cannot swim! If they get wet, they cannot fly. If a honeybee is caught in the rain, she will hide underneath leaves until conditions are dry enough for her to fly again.

The Intelligence of Honeybees

Honeybee brains are about the size of a sesame seed. Despite their small size, honeybees can recognize human faces. This means they can learn to recognize their beekeepers!

An older bee's brain can stop aging, a process known as reverse aging, if it takes on a younger bee's job, like becoming a nurse bee. A honeybee queen can lay up to 2,500 eggs a day.

Honeybees have 170 odorant receptors, giving them a sense of smell that is 50 times more powerful than that of a dog. Because of their acute sense of smell, they can be trained to detect explosives, bombs, and landmines, as well as other chemicals of interest!

Honeybee antennae have more than 300 taste receptors. Honeybees can even taste with their feet! The feet on their front legs have taste receptors, allowing them to taste nectar immediately upon landing on a flower. This helps them decide if it's worth collecting. These taste receptors can detect sweet, salty, and bitter flavors.

Communication Among Honeybees

Honeybees communicate the location and quality of food sources to others in their hive by performing a "waggle dance." They also communicate with each other by emitting pheromones, which are chemical signals released into the air that guide the behavior of other bees.

Honeybees work tirelessly to keep their hives clean. They haul out dust, hairs, and pests. These diligent workers are so obsessed with cleanliness that most will leave the hive when they know it’s time to die. This behavior helps avoid contaminating brood and food stocks. There are even worker bees in the hive whose job is that of an undertaker, removing bees that didn’t make it outside the hive before dying.

The Dangers of Bee Venom

Bee venom is more deadly than cobra venom. However, it would take more than 3,800 bee stings to kill the average human. If a person has an anaphylactic allergy to bee stings, a single sting can be deadly if not treated immediately.

Conclusion

The world of honeybees is truly fascinating. From their incredible ability to pollinate crops to their unique communication methods, honeybees play a crucial role in our ecosystem. By learning more about these amazing creatures, we can appreciate their importance and contribute to their conservation.

At Pualani Bee Farm, we are committed to educating the next generation about the vital role honeybees play in our world. We hope to inspire a love for these amazing insects and encourage everyone to protect them for future generations.