Honeybees

Recently I read the book The Honey Bus by Meredith May. I found it in my library and for some reason, the title caught my attention. I decided to give it a read and I'm glad I did. The author mixes up her troubled childhood with her discovery of bees through her grandfather's beehives. She talks about the many lessons she learned about bees by observing bee behavior and learning from her grandfather. I really enjoyed this book and if you have any interest in honey or honeybees, you might enjoy this book also.

After reading this book, I wanted to learn more about honeybees. I think that is a sign of a good nonfiction book. It makes you interested in learning more, then the author did a good job of sharing information.

Interesting facts about honeybees:

They live up to 5 years.

Honeybees are social and cooperative insects.

They live in colonies which consist of one queen bee, thousands of drone bees (male) and tens of thousands of female worker bees.

The drone's job is to mate with the queen. Then they die.

Once mated, the queen can lay 2000 eggs per day.

Young worker bees are nurse bees and they clean the hive and feed the larvae.

The nurse bees feed one single female larvae royal jelly and she will eventually become a queen bee.

All of the bees have different jobs. Their duties change depending on their age.

Young bees go into training before they go on their own to gather pollen.

Bees do different dances as a way of communicating with other bees. Here is a YouTube video showing the "Waggle":

In the winter, the bees huddle together with the queen in the center. They work together to keep the center at a specific temperature. The worker bees rotate so no bee gets too cold. They eat stored honey to produce body heat.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash