Last month, thirteen Learners gathered at Woodrow for the first expedition of the Lifelong Learners Association: a field trip to a Stonewall apiary! We were generously hosted by Jim Campbell, who gave us a tour of his family apiary through the Red River Apiarists' Association, a "Bee Club that promotes and enjoys Bees, Pollination, and Honey Promotions in Manitoba".
Some fun facts we learned:
Even though the bee's brain is smaller than a period at the end of a sentence (in 12-pt font, smarty), they still form complex societies where each bee has a designated role to play. Every colony has workers, drones, undertakers, housekeepers, nurses and one queen bee. The queen bee is the only bee that is allowed to poop in the hive, all the other bees have to go outside of the hive to poop. Since it is the queen's job to fertilize the eggs, she doesn't have time to leave the hive to go for a poop, so the housekeeper bees bring her poop outside for her.
When trying to make honey, female bees will pass nectar back and forth in their mouths. They have four tongues and will kiss the tips of their tongues together, one will spit while the other sucks, as some evaporates. They want to dry down the nectar to make honey. SO BASICALLY HONEY IS THE PRODUCT OF FEMALE BEES MAKING OUT. No wonder royal jelly has aphrodisiac properties.
For more information on the sex life of bees, just ask
Isabella Rossellini.
Some fast facts about bees from the Bee Maid website, BEES DON'T SLEEP
* Honeybees are insects* Honeybees have 6 legs, 5 eyes, and 2 sets of wings
* Honeybees can fly at about 20 mph
* Most honeybees in a colony are workers, who live for about 6 weeks
* Each colony has 1 queen, who will live for about 2-3 years
* Both workers and queens are female
* The male honeybees are called drones, and they do no work at all
* There will be between 20,000-60,000 honeybees in one colony
* Honeybees have been around for 30 million years
* Only workers will sting, and only if they feel threatened
* Worker honeybees will die once they sting
* Drones have no stinger
* Queens have a stinger, but don’t leave the hive to help defend it
* A worker bee will collect about 1/10th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime
* It takes about 556 workers to gather 1 pound of honey
* It takes the nectar from about 2 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey
* A Canadian Prairie honeybee colony can produce an average of 170 pounds of honey in a single season
* Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba produce most of Canada’s honey
* Honey is a natural, unrefined food that does not spoil
* Minerals found in honey include iron, copper, sodium, potassium, manganese, calcium, and phosphorous
Honey never goes bad, just like learning.
AND MUCH WAS LEARNED BY ALL.
xoxo The LLA
this is so fun to read :)
ReplyDelete