Bees at work

Here is a look at the honey bees hard at work on the clover in the front pasture. I think I can almost taste the honey! (Click on the photo for a closer view.)

Of course John is the beekeeper and knows volumes more about bees, hives, pollen, nectar, etc. but here are a few interesting facts about the honeybee that have simply amazed me:

-Honey bees can collect about 66lbs of pollen per hive per year. The pollen and honey is used as food for the honey bees.
-Honey bees must consume about 17-22 pounds of honey to produce each pound of beeswax. Beeswax is secreted by glands to make the honeycomb.
-Worker honey bees live about 6 weeks during spring and summer and 4 months in the winter. The queen has a 3 to 4 year lifetime laying 600-800 eggs a day.
-Honey bees fly at 15 miles per hour and usually forage within 1-2 miles of the hive but can fly much farther in search of pollen. Their wings beat 200 times per second...buzzzzz!
-Each honey bee makes about 1/12th of a teaspoon in its lifetime. It takes about 556 workers to gather 1 pound of honey from about 2 million flowers.
-Worker bees are female and do all the work. Males, called drones, do no work, have no stinger, all they do is mate.
-Honey bees communicate with each other by "dancing".

As I said, there are volumes upon volumes of facts about bees... this is just barely scratching the surface... that is about all my brain can handle.