Did you know that...

A Queen can lay as many as 1000 – 2000 eggs per day and can live for up to 5 years.

A typical active honeybee colony may have around 50,000 workers but could vary between 20,000 – 60,000. 

Only female honeybees can sting, the males (drones) are not able to sting. Queen honeybees can sting, but a sting from a honeybee queen is very rare.

Foraging honeybees have to fly about 55,000 miles to produce a pound of honey, visiting around 2 million flowers.

Each honeybee makes about 1 twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.

Virgin queens will mate with 10-40 different drones. Drones die after mating.

Honey bees have 5 eyes: 3 simple eyes on top of its head, and 2 compound eyes, with numerous hexagonal facets.

On a single foraging trip, a worker bee will visit between 50 and 100 flowers.

Bees have 2 stomachs – one for eating, and one for storing nectar and processing it into honey.

Honey bees cannot see red light but can see ultraviolet light.

Honey bees contribute to the pollination and production of common foods like strawberries, cucumbers, apples, red peppers and brussels sprouts!

Due to their acute sense of smell, they can be trained to detect explosives, bombs, and landmines.

One hive can produce 60 lb (27 kg) or more of honey in a good season, however an average hive would be around 25 lb (11 kg) surplus.

Honeybees have been around far longer than humans with fossil evidence from 150 million years ago!