What’s the buzz? Fun facts about bees

By Terry Georgia The Surveyor

• There are 900 species of bees native to Colorado

• About 30-50 thousand worker bees live in each hive

• Each worker bee lives about 42 days

• Drone bees fertilize the queen, then die

• Each drone lives about 90 days

• Only one queen bee lives in each hive

• A queen bee lays roughly one egg each minute

• A queen bee lives two to three years

• Specialized nurse bees tend the larvae as they develop

• Even in freezing weather, honey bees maintain a constant 95degree temperature inside the hive

• A bee makes about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime

It takes 55, miles of flight time for bees to make one gallon of honey

When worker bees find a source of flowers, they return to the hive and perform a “waggle dance” to show other workers where the food source is located

It takes 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey

• When the population of a hive gets too large, workers create a new queen and swarm to another location to set up a new colony

• Professional bee extraction experts can safely move a swarm from an undesirable location to a safer home where they can thrive