Interesting facts about the bee. For everyone - informative information about bees and the honey they collect

Interestingly, people have been extracting bee honey since the Stone Age. In the caves of Cuevas de la Araña in Spain, an ancient drawing was discovered showing a man climbing a tree to collect honey from a wild beehive. This drawing is about 8 thousand years old.

When bees were domesticated is not exactly known. However, archaeologists have found that ancient egypt Beekeeping has been well known since at least the 3rd millennium BC. The most interesting thing is that this occupation was so honorable that one of the titles Egyptian pharaoh was the "lord of the bees."

Bees have an extremely developed sense of smell. They are able to smell nectar from a distance of a kilometer!

To collect a kilogram of honey, a bee must make about 5,000 flights, while visiting almost 10 million flowers. In this case, it flies over 300 thousand kilometers, which is approximately equal to the length of 6 earth's equators. This is such an amazing fact!

Bees communicate with each other with the help of special body movements (“bee dances”) and odorous substances - pheromones that their body releases.

A bee can carry about 50 milligrams of nectar. True, she eats part of the collected nectar during the flight to maintain her strength. If the distance that she needs to fly is large, then the bee can consume 60-70% of her prey.

When beekeepers fumigate bees with smoke, they do not calm them down at all, as is commonly believed. On the contrary, they are intimidating. Bees, taught by thousands of years of evolution, understand that smoke is an indicator of a forest fire, so they evacuate the larvae and honey reserves. Since honey is stored in the abdomen of the bee, it does not bend, respectively, the insect cannot sting, which is what the beekeepers use.

A bee can move away from the hive for 8 kilometers, and then it is easy to find the way back. Another thing is that bees usually do not fly so far - a lot of energy costs. The usual working radius of bee flights is 2 kilometers. At the same time, it flies around an area of ​​12 hectares. Naturally, in such a huge area, a bee will almost always find honey plants.

Most a large number of Siberian and Far Eastern bees bring honey during the season. When linden blossoms in these regions, the bees can produce up to 30 kilograms of honey per day. The record collection was recorded in Siberia: as much as 420 kilograms per season.

Nectar is collected by about half of all bees in the hive. The rest are busy building new combs, caring for offspring, producing honey and other useful things.

The bee is one of the most powerful creatures on the planet. It is able to lift into the air a load exceeding its weight by 2 times. In addition, it can pull on a flat smooth surface an object weighing 20 times its own weight.

For some reason, the queen bee does not sting a person under any circumstances. But having met another queen, she always tries to sting her rival.

The total distance traveled by honey bees during the honey season is approximately 385,000 kilometers. This distance is comparable to the distance from our planet to the moon.

An incredible, but very interesting fact: there are up to 2,000 illegal apiaries on the roofs of administrative buildings in London. The most amazing thing is that the Londoners themselves do not even suspect this. How the bees (and beekeepers) manage to avoid the attention of the employees working in these buildings remains a mystery.

When a bee flies light, it can reach speeds of up to 65 kilometers per hour. When she carries a load, she does it at a speed of 15-30 kilometers per hour, depending on the severity of the burden and the direction of the wind. Interestingly, at the same time, the bee's wings flap with an incredible frequency: up to 450 strokes per second.

Bees are able to detect explosives and drugs by smell. Therefore, some special services actively use specially trained bees. However, interestingly, the opposite also happens: bees become drug couriers. In 1985, a huge consignment of Ecuadorian honey containing a considerable percentage of cocaine was intercepted in Peru. It turned out that the drug was not dissolved in honey - the “flying” delicacy was made by the bees themselves, which Ecuadorian drug dealers released over the fields where coca grew.

Well, the final interesting fact about bees: in Japan, they almost abandoned the breeding of a local breed of bees in favor of the European one, since it is more honey-bearing. However, Japanese beekeepers are faced with the fact that European bees are completely defenseless against the Asian hornets that are ruining the hives. But local bees have learned to deal with the aggressor very original way: they huddle around the hornet in a ball and actively flap their wings, heating the air inside the ball. The hornet is less resistant to overheating than bees, therefore it dies from heat stroke.

A children's story about bees will briefly tell a lot useful information which will be interesting to listen to. Also, a report on bees will deepen your knowledge of biology.

A story about bees for children

Description of a bee for children

You have probably seen striped, buzzing and honey-bearing insects on flowers. These are bees. They live in all corners of the planet except Antarctica. There is even a whole science that studies bees - apiology.

The bee has a beautiful striped yellow-black body. It has wings and an elongated proboscis - a nose. Thanks to him, the insect sucks nectar from plants and, after that, turns it into tasty and healthy honey. Perhaps this distinguishing feature bees. After all, only they produce a delicacy that other animals, insects and humans love so much.

What do bees eat?

The bees themselves feed on nectar and pollen from plants. They feed the insect with energy and nutrients. Those who live with a person eat specially prepared sugar syrup.

Lifestyle of bees

Bees live in friendly, large families. The number of individuals is 10-70 thousand. Each member of the family has their own responsibilities. For example, the queen bee lays eggs, worker bees collect nectar, feed children and protect the home, and still others build honeycombs. There are also completely useless individuals in the family - drones, which only help to acquire offspring. Like many insects, bees are born from eggs.

Wild bees in nature live wherever they please. They prefer to settle in the crevices of the earth and in the hollows of old trees. But, when a person noticed that insects produce not only tasty, but also healthy honey, he took up breeding - beekeeping. This, by the way, is one of the most ancient occupations of man.

• When the bees notice a stranger near their home, they surround him with a dense ring. With fluttering wings, they heat the stranger, and he suffocates. If a uninvited guest climbed into the hive and the bees cannot bear it, then they propolis the stranger, that is, cover it with a resinous, sticky substance.
• Bees can fly away from their home 8 km and easily find their way back.
• To get a spoonful of honey, 200 striped insects need to work all day.
• The honey bee on its rough surface can carry a load that 300 times heavier than it.
• commander Richard the Lionheart used bees as a weapon- soldiers on the battlefield threw vessels filled with these insects at opponents.
• A bee performs a dance to tell its relatives about a new source of pollen. If it is circular, it means that a clearing with flowers is not far, and if the dance is in eights, then fly quite far.

We hope that a short story about bees helped you prepare for the lesson. And you can add a story about bees for children through the comment form below.

The uterus in the family is the only full-fledged female with well-developed genitals. The whole composition of the family comes from it: worker bees, drones and young queens. The queen is constantly surrounded by worker bees who take care of her: they give food, clean her body, clean the cells of the honeycombs for laying eggs in them, etc. The presence of the queen bees in the family is recognized by her smell. The uterus secretes a special substance, the so-called "uterine substance", which is licked by worker bees from the "retinue" surrounding it. The smell of this substance is transmitted to all individuals of the bee family due to the constant exchange of food between them. When the uterus dies, the supply of "uterine substance" stops, and the whole family quickly feels its absence.
When queens are inseminated, the sperm of drones, containing a huge amount of spermatozoa, enters the spermatheca of the uterus, where it is stored throughout its life. The eggs laid by the uterus pass from the ovaries first through the paired oviducts, and then through the unpaired one. If, at the same time, spermatozoa (8-12 pieces each) penetrate into the mature eggs from the seminal receptacle, then the eggs will be fertilized. If the sperm of the drones does not fall on them, the eggs will remain unfertilized. Therefore, the uterus lays both fertilized and unfertilized eggs. From unfertilized eggs, only male drones develop. The latter, therefore, do not have a father and inherit only the property of the mother. The fertilized eggs develop into queen bees and worker bees.
Bees grow queens in large honeycomb cells specially built for this purpose - queen cells. Bees can rebuild them on ordinary bee cells of the honeycomb, in which the queen has already laid fertilized eggs. Such queen cells are rebuilt by bees after the sudden death of the old queen in order to bring out a new one to replace it.
With the sudden death of the queens and the absence of larvae in the nest, the food intended for them is consumed by the nurse bees themselves, which causes the development of ovaries in them (each of 3-5, less often of 10-20 egg tubes). However, worker bees cannot mate with drones. They also do not have a sperm receptacle to store sperm. Therefore, from the unfertilized eggs laid by such bees, only drones develop. Worker bees with functioning ovaries are called tinder bees. A family with tinder bees is doomed to gradual extinction if the beekeeper does not provide it with the necessary assistance in time.
The worker bees do all the work inside and outside the hive. They clean the nest, prepare the cells of the combs for laying eggs in them by the uterus, secrete wax and build new combs, feed the larvae, maintain the required temperature in the hive, protect the nest, collect nectar and pollen from plant flowers and bring them to the hive; in a word, worker bees perform all the work associated with the life of a bee colony.
The “stove bees” are responsible for the production of heat, which regulate the production of heat with great precision and are able to heat up to 44 ° C. One such bee, climbing into a free cell, is able to provide heat for up to 70 pupae, and in total, depending on the size of the colony, the number of such bees can range from several to several hundred. The temperature at which the pupa developed affects the future "profession": the pupa that developed at 35 ° C will become a forager, and at 34 ° C - a housewife. In addition, the specialization of the bee depends on the innate response to stimuli: individuals that respond to positive stimuli (food) become foragers, and negative ones (danger) become guards. .To raise a thousand larvae requires 100 g of honey, 50 g of pollen and 30 g of water. The annual need for pollen is up to 30 kg per bee colony.

Today's article will be devoted to interesting facts about insects that love teamwork and teamwork, namely bees. Let's start with the amazing hard workers familiar to many who spend their lives in search of flowers. So let's get started.

Interesting facts about bees

In large bee colonies, up to 80 thousand bees can be located at the same time. For a year, one such bee family eats about 225 kilograms of honey. All working bees are females. At the head of the hive is the queen bee. She is the brain and heart of the whole family and she is the only one of all who can give birth. Why? The fact is that worker bees, when they feed the larvae, can ask them a different diet.

Depending on how the larva was fed, in the future it can become either a working or a queen. With a change in the composition of the feed, the larva develops full-fledged genitals and it is from it that the future queen will turn out. In appearance, the uterus is slightly larger than the rest of the bees (in the photo on the right, it is marked with a green dot on the back).

In the spring, the bees change their diet for their queen and she loses weight a little, this is done so that she can fly again. When the time has come, the queen flies out of the nest and mates with 5-10 drones (males) at a height of up to 30 m. Upon returning to the nest, she begins to lay eggs and will continue to do so until next spring.
During the day, the queen bee lays 1500-2000 eggs from which her daughters, worker bees, will later hatch. If the spring when the queen should mate will stand non-flying weather, then she will lay unfertilized eggs. They will hatch male bees - drones, but they do not work for the benefit of the hive. However, workers specially grow drones, sparing no effort and food, because without them there will be no continuation of the genus of honey bees. If the queen did not have time to mate, then the entrance to the hive will be free for drones from other families.

If the colony feels that the queen is ill, or she is dysfunctional, then the worker bees immediately grow a new, young queen in return. All actions are aimed at the preservation and healthy functioning of the family.

Average life expectancy of bees:
uterus 4-5 years,
worker bees in the summer - 30 - 60 days,
worker bee bred in autumn period and overwintered - 190-210 days.

Bees born in the spring-summer period work the most, they are responsible for building honeycombs, collecting nectar and pollen, guarding the hive and other seasonal work. Thus, their resource is consumed quickly and the life span is short. Autumn bees, on the contrary, live long because they did not spend their energy on summer work.

In one flight from the nest, a honey bee flies about a thousand flowers. To collect one kilogram of honey, one bee will need to make more than 60 thousand flights and bypass about one million flowers.

If for some reason there is not enough honey for overwintering, then the worker bees are the first to die even before the food shortage begins. Reducing the number of workers reduces the consumption of honey. By sacrificing itself, the worker bee takes care of the queen and the safety of the family.

The bees' favorite scents are subtle floral scents. Unloved can be called sharp and strong, especially strongly the bees do not like the strong smell from horses, dogs and goats. These animals are often attacked by bees in the Dead Sea.

The most unloved smell that all bees will react to is the smell of poison. As soon as one bee stings, hundreds of guards will rush into battle. Therefore, when moving in the apiary, you should be extremely careful, do not make sudden movements, do not make noise and do not use perfume. Inga Korneshova specially for the site We hope our article has helped you to get to know and get to know “from the inside” the life of these small insects.
Photo of a swarm of bees flying away with a new queen from the hive in search of a new home.

Listed below are the most Interesting Facts about bees. Insects, which tirelessly produce the most delicious delicacy and medicine - honey, are much more complex than we all think.

1. Throughout their lives, honey bees change professions.. At first, they feed the larvae along with the queen. When wax glands develop, they build honeycombs. Then they work as scavengers. Then they turn into soldiers and guard the letok. After the bees collect honey, and in their old age they bring water to the hive.
2. AT bee hives a complex checkpoint system. Hives smell differently, furry workers have a special recess in the body where the smell is stored. Approaching the notch, the bee opens the recess, like a pass. A person does not catch these smells, but soldier bees will not let a stranger into their territory.

   

3. All bees have five eyes. They need three simple eyes to view closely spaced objects. Two compound eyes are responsible for vision during flight, helping to navigate through the air.

   

4. These insects see ultraviolet. Ultraviolet is a common color in natural environment, so the vision of bees is able to capture it. In addition, insects distinguish between yellow, blue, blue-green and purple colors. But orange and pure green are perceived by them as yellow.

   

5. Aging and stress do not threaten them. Elderly individuals choose for themselves what to do in the hive, and the choice is reflected in their body. During the work that is characteristic of the young, the structure of proteins in the brain of the elderly changes and the body begins the reverse process. Old bees get younger and help the rest. In addition to aging, the insect brain also blocks stress.

   

6. Honeycombs - the standard of an architectural structure. The whole secret lies in their shape: regular hexagons provide strength to the structure. The walls of the structure are very thin. Therefore, bees use very little wax to build honeycombs.

   

7. Bees don't fly far from home. Long-haul flights exhaust them and affect life expectancy. Therefore, they collect honey close to the hive, but at such a distance that the enemies do not find their house. Two or three kilometers is enough for this.
8. They consolidate their efforts to get rid of enemies. This feature was surprisingly discovered by scientists. So, in Japan, bee hives suffer from attacks by Asian hornets. One such hornet is capable of destroying 30 winged workers at a time, so Japanese bees have developed a special tactic. When the hornet approaches, it is surrounded, forming a living ball. Active muscle work heats the air inside the ball, and the enemy simply dies from overheating.

   

9. Hives are not for everyone, some prefer to be alone. In addition to "family" bees, there are single bees. They do not make honey and wax, and build nests in trees or earthen burrows.

   

10. Bees often perform ritual dances. When a honey bee finds a place with nectar, it returns to the hive and dances. The angle of the abdomen tells the rest of the direction, and the frequency of wagging tells about the distance to the object.

    

11. There are so-called cuckoo bees. Such individuals place their larva in the hive, which hatches and eats food supplies, and kills other larvae. Sometimes they even replace the queen and lay their eggs in the hive.

    

12. In case of fire, they first of all save honey. Beekeepers use smoke to simulate a fire. At this time, insects desperately absorb honey to stock up on the road, and can no longer sting.

    

13. They breed on the fly. In one of the species of bees, males, when mating, rise into the air after the female. The entire intercourse lasts only a few seconds.

    

14. Bees are able to recognize the shapes of objects that they encounter in nature.. They easily determine the flowers and the number of petals. Some scientists are even convinced of their ability to distinguish human faces.

    

15. These insects can work as sappers. Thin receptors on their legs catch explosives. And if you train them correctly, they will swarm exactly in those places where the bomb is planted.