10 facts about honey bee hives

 

This weekend the farm and garden work group learned about honey bees and bee hives. Here are the top ten facts we learned:

1. There are 40,000 bees per hive.
2. One hive produces 60 - 100 pounds of honey!
3. Two hives can increase a farms production by 30%
4. The bee colony is the animal, not the individual bee.
5. When a bee stings you it releases an attack pheromone that other bees detect.
6. There is only one queen bee per hive. If there are more, the first queen will kill the others.
7. Queen bees are made, not born, with a diet of royal jelly.
8. Virgin queens do a mating fly. They produce pheromones to attract males, who die after mating. 
9. Bee colonies have body guards that detect intruders by a pheromone given off by bee fingernails.
10. In winter it is good to give a hive supplemental solid sugar food, called the super, to help the hive survive.