• Honeybees flap their wings 11,400 times a minute – that's what makes the buzzing sound.
• A honeybee can fly six miles at 15 mph.
• The average honeybee makes about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.
• To make a pound of honey, 556 bees visit 2 million flowers.
• A honeybee visits 50 to 100 flowers before returning to the hive.
• Worker bees are all female, and they live just six to eight weeks.
Female bees do all the work in the colony. They keep the nursery clean, feed the larvae, collect the nectar, build the wax comb, guard the hive, fan their wings to keep the hive cool and haul water to the hive.
• Male bees, called drones, do not have stingers. Their only function is mating.
• There is one queen bee per hive. She lives two to three years. She is the only bee in the hive to lay eggs, and she can lay more than 2,000 eggs a day.
• When a bee finds a good source of pollen, she returns to the hive and performs a dance called a waggle, which tells the other bees how to find the pollen.
• Bees store pollen, which they use for food, in the wax comb, organizing it by flavor.
• In the Sacramento city limits, it is legal to keep two hives per residential lot.
• Bees swarm in the spring. Swarming occurs when the queen bee leaves the hive with a group of worker bees to establish a new colony.
• During swarming season, Sacramento Beekeeping Supplies gets about 1,000 to 1,500 calls from residents who need a beekeeper to help remove a swarm.
– Gwen Schoen
Here are some good sources of information about beekeeping
• Sacramento Beekeeping Supplies, 2110 X St., Sacramento; (916) 451-2337.
The shop sells everything you need for beekeeping, from protective clothing to hives. It also sells honey, pollen, candle-making supplies and other products. The store is open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
• www.beekeepingstarterkit.com: Beginning beekeepers can order starter kits at this Web site.
• www.honey.com: This is the home site of the National Honey Board. You will find recipes, industry news and links to honey and beekeeping suppliers.
• "Beekeeping for Dummies" by Howland Blackiston (For Dummies, $19.99, 336 pages). This book is recommended by Eric Mussen of the entomology department at UC Davis. While it was written for East Coast beekeeping, Mussen says, the book is filled with useful information on how to build a hive, establish a bee colony, maintain the colony, deal with pests and harvest honey.
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