Queen
- Queen is fed every 20-30 minutes at peak brood rearing.
- Queen larva grow 1500-1700 times weight of egg.
Broodnest Facts
- Worker larvae grow 900-1100 times weight of eggs.
- In a normal hive at height of season, there will be:
- 300-1000 drones
- 25,000 older foragers
- 25,000 young house bees.
- 9000 uncapped larvae.
- 6000 eggs
- 20,000 capped brood incubating.
Nurse Bee Visits to Larvae
- 1300 bees inspect and visit each larvae, feeding them 2% of the time.
- They make up to 7200 visits per larvae.
- 650 bees cap cells.
- 60 bees clean cells.
- Queen larvae fed 1600 times (over total of 17 hours0.
- Worker larvae fed 143 times (2 hours).
Flight Speed
- Honey bees fly at 9 to 15 miles per hour.
- Honey bees stroke their wings about 11,500 times a minutes
Pollen Collecting
- Bees spend 10-187 minutes collecting pollen.
- About one-half a bees body weight comprises a typical load.
- A colony collects 40-125 pounds per year.
- A typical hive requires 500-600 square inches of pollen reserve to sustain itself for the winter.
- 15-30% of foragers collect pollen, makeing 8-100 flower visits per load.
- The foragers bee makes 1-50 trips per day collecting pollen, spending 6-200 minutes per trip.
- There are 20,000-60,000 pollen grains on one bee.
- 250 grams of pollen collect in one day equals 17,000 flights by foragers.
- Amount of pollen collected per day equals 26-71 ounces.
- One colony can eat 44-65 pounds pollen per year.
Nectar Collecting
- Nectar in the honey stomach weighs 25-40 mg.
- Full load is 50-80% of body weight.
- 12 honey bees are required to make 1 teaspoon of honey.
- 1-500 flowers are need to gather a full load.
- A forager may visit 75-3000 flowers per day.
- A single hives foragers visit 225,000 flowers per day.
- A bee spends 5-150 minutes per trip.
- In a forager’s lifetime it will produce 1/12 teaspoon.
- Foragers must visit approximately 2 million flowers to collect one pound of honey.
- 15% of foragers collect both nectar and pollen.
- 50-80% of foragers collect nectar.
- Swarming workers carry 36 mg of honey.
Sugar and Energy Requirements
- Bees eat about 8 pounds of honey to produce 1 pound of beeswax.
- Beeswax production in most hives is about 1 1/2-2% of the total honey yield.
- Energy in 1 ounce of honey would provide one bee with enough energy to fly around the world.
- Resting drone burns 1-3 mg of sugar per hour while a flying drone burns 14 mg per hour.
- Resting worker bees burn 0.7 mg sugar per hour while a flying worker burns 11.5 mg sugar per hour.
Miscellaneous Fact
- Workers weigh over 121 mg.
- The brain of a worker bee is about a cubic millimeter but has the densest neuropile tissue of any animal.
- A bee gorged with 30 mg of honey can fly 34 miles.
- Bees fly 1.2-2.5 miles and a maximum of 6 miles away from the hive.
Reference: The Beekeeper’s Handbook (Fourth Edition) by Diana Sammataro and Alphonse Avitabile