Honey Bee Trivia Reply


Honey bees have been producing honey in the same way for 150 million years.
The honey bee is the only insect that produces food eaten by man, and honey is the only food on the planet that does not spoil or rot.
Honey bees must gather nectar from two million flowers to make one pound of honey. One bee would therefore have to fly around 90,000 miles – three times around the globe – to make one pound of honey.
A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a single collection trip and needs to visit 1,500 flowers to produce a drop of honey. A typical bee makes only one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.
When a honey bee finds a good source of nectar it flies back to the hive and indicates to other bees where the nectar source is by doing a waggle dance in a figure of eight. This indicates the position of the nectar source in relation to the sun and the hive.
The buzzing sound of a honey bee is made by their wings which beat 11,400 times per minute.
Honey has been used as a medicine for millenia and is claimed to heal many things including, sore throats, skin problems, hay fever and digestive disorders.
Honey has antiseptic properties and historically was often used as a dressing for wounds and a first aid treatment for burns and cuts. The NHS is the largest purchaser of New Zealand Manuka honey which has very high antiseptic properties.
The natural fruit sugars in honey – fructose and glucose – are very quickly digested by the body. This is used by athletes to provide a natural energy boost.
Honey is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and water; and it’s the only food that contains ‘pinocembrin’, an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning.
The Romans used honey instead of gold to pay their taxes.
Explorers searching an Egyptian tomb found an urn filled with honey from 2,000 years ago.   Alexander the Great’s body was preserved in a jar of honey when he died in 323 BC.
In Ancient Egypt, honey had a role in births, deaths and marriages; it provided the energy and inspiration to create a child, was used to make special honey cakes as an offering to placate the gods, and was an ingredient in embalming fluids.
Honey’s ability to attract and retain moisture means that it has long been used as a beauty treatment. It was part of Cleopatra’s daily beauty ritual.
Albert Einstein is attributed to have said “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live.” This may not be strictly correct, but honey bees do pollinate 80 percent of our flowering crops which constitutes a third of everything we eat; and the value of pollinating services of the bees has been estimated to be worth over £200m a year, with the retail value of what they pollinate worth closer to £1b.

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