Interesting facts about bees. Interesting facts from the life of bees

Listed below are the most interesting facts about bees. Insects, which tirelessly produce a delicious treat and medicine - honey, are much more complex than we all think.

1. Honey bees change professions throughout their lives.. At first they feed the larvae along with the queen. When wax glands develop, they build honeycombs. Then they work as garbage collectors. Then they become soldiers and guard the entrance. Afterwards the bees collect honey, and in their old age they bring water to the hive.
2. IN beehives a complex access system works. Hives smell differently; furry workers have a special depression in their body where the smell is stored. Approaching the entrance, the bee opens the recess, like a pass. Humans cannot detect these odors, but soldier bees will not allow a stranger into their territory.
3. All bees have five eyes. They need three simple eyes to look at nearby objects. Two compound eyes are responsible for vision during flight, helping to navigate through the air.
4. These insects see ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet is a common color in natural environment, so bees’ vision is able to detect 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 themselves choose what to do in the hive, and the choice is reflected in their body. During work, which is typical for young people, the structure of proteins in the brains of old people changes and the body begins the reverse process. Old bees become younger and help the rest. In addition to aging, insects’ brains are also blocked by 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-distance flights exhaust them and affect their life expectancy. Therefore, they collect honey close to the hive, but at such a distance that their enemies do not discover their home. Two or three kilometers is enough for this.
8. They consolidate their efforts to get rid of enemies. Scientists were surprised to discover this feature. Thus, in Japan, beehives suffer from attacks by Asian hornets. One such hornet is capable of destroying 30 winged workers at a time, so Japanese bees have developed special tactics. 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 solitude. In addition to “family” bees, there are also solitary bees. They do not make honey or wax, and build nests in trees or burrows in the ground.
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 others the direction, and the frequency of wagging indicates 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 own eggs in the hive.
12. In case of fire, the first thing they do is save honey.. Beekeepers use smoke to simulate a fire. At this time, insects desperately consume honey to stock up for the journey, and can no longer sting.
13. They reproduce on the fly. In one species of bees, males, when mating, rise into the air after the female. The entire sexual act lasts only a few seconds.
14. Bees are able to recognize the shapes of objects that they encounter in nature.. They can easily identify 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 paws detect explosives. And if you train them correctly, they will swarm exactly in those places where the bomb is planted.

Bees have five eyes. Three small eyes are at the top of the bee's head, and two large ones are at the front.

The average flight speed of a bee is 24 km per hour.

A bee needs to fly 321,869 km to make 1 kg of honey.

Bee honey has been around for 30 million years.

Bee is the only insect, which produces food that can be eaten by humans without further processing.

Honeybees are vital plant pollinators.

A bee's wings beat 11,400 times per minute, which creates their distinctive buzzing sound.

Honey bees are almost the only bees with hairy compound eyes.

A bee pollinates 50 to 100 flowers in one honey-seeking trip.

Honeybees can perceive movements that take about 1/300th of a second. People can only see changes separated by 1/50th of a second. If bees watched a film, they would see every single frame of the film.

A bee's sting has a barb that secures the stinger into the body of the victim. The bee loses its stinger and venom bag in the victim's body and soon dies from a ruptured abdominal cavity.

Honeybees communicate with each other through “dancing,” which is how they communicate the direction and distance of flowers.

The average bee is actually only able to make 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.

Beeswax is produced by eight paired glands on bottom side abdomen

Honey bees must eat about 7-9 kg of honey to produce 450 grams of beeswax.

Honeybees are herbivores, feeding on nectar and pollen from flowers, but they are also capable of devouring their brood when stressed.

Bees at birth do not know how to make honey; younger bees learn this from more experienced ones.

The queen bee is the only sexual female in the hive. She lives for about 2-3 years and is the only bee that lays eggs. Her busiest time is during the summer months, when she lays up to 2,500 eggs a day. The queen is capable of laying up to 200,000 eggs per year.

A queen bee can mate with up to 17 drones during 1-2 days of mating flights. The queen bee stores the sperm from these matings in her spermatheca. The queen bee is able to control the flow of sperm to fertilize her eggs when she is about to lay an egg. Honey bees have an unusual genetic system for determining sex. Fertilized eggs will become female offspring, while unfertilized eggs will become male offspring. Worker bees emerge from a fertilized egg and have a full (double) set of chromosomes.

Males, or drones, develop from unfertilized eggs and thus have only one set of chromosomes. They do no work, have no sting, and are intended only for mating. Worker bees are sexually immature females.

Worker bees live about four weeks in the spring or summer, and 6-8 months in the winter.

The worker bee's brain is about 1 cubic millimeter but has the densest neuropil tissue of any other animal.

Only worker bees are capable of stinging, and only if they feel threatened. Queens also have a stinger, but they do not leave the hive.

A healthy person needs to receive 500-1100 bee stings for it to be fatal. For a person who has a severe allergic reaction to bee venom, just one bee sting is enough.

A bee colony consists of 20,000-60,000 bees and one queen bee.

Each colony of honey bees has its own unique scent to identify its members.

Bees also drink water, this way they lower the temperature of their hive so that it does not overheat in the heat.

The honeycomb is made up of hexagonal cells with walls that can support 25 times their own weight.

In winter, bees feed on honey, which they collected during the warm season. They form a tight cluster in their hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.

Small species of bees often build their homes directly in the soil.

Agriculture depends largely on the pollination of flowering plants by honey bees. Honeybees carry out up to 80% of all pollinations by all insects. Without such pollination, there will be a significant reduction in fruit and vegetable yields.

Bees collect up to 30 kg of pollen per year per hive. Pollen from male reproductive cells, created by all flowering plants for plant fertilization and embryo formation. Bees use pollen as food. Pollen is one of the richest and purest natural products, containing up to 35% protein, 10% sugar, carbohydrates, enzymes, minerals and vitamins (carotene), B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B3 (niacin), B5 ( panothenic acid), C (ascorbic acid), H (biotin) and R (rutin).

Honey is used by bees for nutrition during all year round. There are many types and flavors of honey, depending on its nectar source. Bees make honey from the nectar they collect from flowering trees and plants. Honey is easily digestible, pure food. Honey is hygroscopic and has antibacterial properties. Consuming local honey can help relieve allergies.

Secreted from special glands beeswax used by bees to build honeycombs. It is also used by humans to make medicines, cosmetics, art supplies, furniture polishes, and candle making.

Propolis (a sticky resin) collected by bees from trees is mixed with wax to make a special glue. Bees use it to seal cracks and repair their hive. People use it in the field of health care, and also as a base for thin wood varnish.

Treatment with bee venom is widely practiced abroad and here to solve health problems and treat diseases such as arthritis, neuralgia, high blood pressure, high level cholesterol.

Honeybees are not a native insect species to the United States. They are "European" in origin, and were brought to North America the first settlers.

Honey bees are not aggressive by nature and will not sting for nothing. They do this to protect their hive.

The practice of collecting honey and beekeeping dates back to the Stone Age, as evidenced by cave paintings.

Honey is the only food that contains all the substances needed to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals and water. It is also a unique food that contains pinocembrin, an antioxidant associated with improved brain function.

Honeybees have 6 legs, 2 compound eyes made up of thousands of tiny lenses (one on each side of the head), 3 simple eyes on the top of the head, 2 pairs of wings, nectar pouches, and a stomach.

Honey bees have 170 odorant receptors, compared to 62 in fruit flies and 79 in mosquitoes. Their exceptional olfactory ability includes receiving signals from the hive, social communication within the hive, and recognizing odors to find food. Their sense of smell is so precise that it can distinguish hundreds of different flower varieties and determine whether a flower contains pollen or nectar from a distance of several meters.

The bee's brain has oval shape and is comparable to the size of a single sesame seed, but it has a remarkable ability to learn and remember things, and can also make complex calculations.

The queen bee can live up to 5 years and is the only bee that lays eggs.

Bees from one swarm can “steal” honey from other hives. If they manage to kill the queen, then they lure the rest of the bees into their hive and they meekly fly to a new place of residence.

There is only one that hunts bees for food. This is an ordinary tit. Particularly active consumption of bees by these birds is noted in the early spring period, when other types of “food” are not yet available.

How to recognize a honey bee
Among the vast family of bees, the most famous is the honey bee (Apis mellifera). Since time immemorial, people have been using it to produce honey. Working bees are easily recognized thanks to the collecting apparatus on the hind leg, where the collected pollen accumulates, forming pollen. The European bee was brought to America by early colonists to produce honey and pollinate fields. Many Americans believe that bees have always lived in America.

Bee maturation time

A queen bee develops from egg to adult in 17 days, a worker bee takes 21 days, and a drone takes 24 days.

Why do bees need upper jaws?

In connection with feeding on nectar and pollen, the role of the upper jaws of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) as organs for grinding solid food receives a new purpose. A worker bee uses its upper jaws to shape the wax when making honeycombs. The drone uses them to gnaw a way out of the sealed cell, and the queen, in addition, kills her rivals with them.

How many bees are in the hive
The average hive can contain up to 60,000 - 120,000 bees.

Bees flap their wings
A honey bee flaps its wings 200 times per second. She needs to make 11,400 strokes per minute to get the characteristic buzzing sound.

Bees have five eyes.
Three at the top of the head and two at the front.

Pass to the hive

Bees have many enemies and “freeloaders”, so the entrance to the hive is reliably guarded by guards who are ready to attack an uninvited guest at any moment. No bee can enter someone else's hive. Each hive has a special smell that is not detectable by humans. Each bee stores this scent in a special cavity in its body. Flying up to the entrance, the bee opens it and presents the smell to the guards as its own. business card or pass.

Various types of work in the hive

During its life, a worker bee performs different kinds works The first time-consuming job is to clean the cells in which the queen lays eggs, as well as to heat and ventilate the hive. The worker bees then move on to feeding the young bees and receiving honey from the foraging bees. Only after this the worker bees begin to make independent flights for honey. A worker bee lives 26-40 days. There are about 80 thousand individuals in the bee family.

Why does a bee dance?

After the bee found a good place to collect pollen, she returns to the hive to report its location to other bees. Information is transmitted using a special “dance” on the honeycomb, during which the bee moves along a closed curve resembling a figure eight, wagging its abdomen. The intensity of the wobble depends on the distance to the food, and the angle of the figure eight indicates the direction.

1 kg honey

In order to produce 500 g of honey, one bee needs to fly from the hive to the flower and back 10 million times. And to make 1 kg of honey, a bee needs to collect nectar from 19 million flowers. Of course, a kilogram of honey is collected by many bees. But one bee has a lot of work: a worker bee visits an average of 7 thousand flowers per day.

Wing vibrations
Insects have different wings, and they vibrate at different frequencies. So, for example, a fly makes 330-350 strokes per second; bee - 300 when it flies with honey, and 440 when it flies without cargo; bumblebees flap their wings 190-240 times per second, and mosquitoes - 500-600 (some species even 1000 times); wasps - 250; horseflies - 100; dragonflies - 40-100; ladybug- 75; cockchafer - 45; moths - 35-40; locust - 20.

Bee vision
Bees do not distinguish the color red. They see it as dark gray or black. But they perceive ultraviolet rays as color, although for humans it is only darkness.

What colors do bees like?

Bees have an innate preference for purple and blue-green colors. Flower-shaped structures of various colors and shapes were placed in the maze. As soon as the weaves were launched into the maze, they immediately rushed off in the yellow and blue patterns. However, it turns out that insects cannot be fooled by color alone. If the bees did not receive the preferred color of nectar or pollen from the "flowers", they immediately began to explore other offers. Thus, compared to hunger, the visual “sympathies” of bees are in the background.

The bee genome has been deciphered

Deciphering the genome of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) took the team of Richard Gibbs, PhD, a year of painstaking work and about $8 million. It turned out that the bee genome is ten times smaller than the human genome and contains about 300 million base pairs of DNA. Now scientists have to find out what place certain genes occupy in the sequence, and what exactly they do.

Swarm departure
In mid-summer, before the young queen leaves the cell, the old queen and some of the worker bees rush to leave the hive. A swarm of bees goes in search of a new home.

Shortest mating behavior

The honey bee Apis mellifera mates in flight, the female rises into the air, the males rush after her, together they resemble a comet and its tail. The right to mate belongs to the winner who catches up with her, but he pays with his life: mating occurs so quickly that after mating the male does not have time to remove his phallus, and it remains in the body of the uterus, the male dies.

Bee flight speed - 22.4 km/h
Bumblebee flight speed - 3 km/h
Hornet flight speed - 25.4 km/h
Wasp flight speed - 9 km/h

Wound healing chitin
Chitosan is a modified chitin from which the protective armor of crabs, crayfish, shrimp, bees, cockroaches, and flies is made. It is non-toxic and biocompatible, an excellent sorbent, immunostimulant, antiseptic, and has a wound-healing effect.

Bees in winter

Bees do not sleep in winter, so they need to store enough food for the winter.

Harvesting honey

One bee colony produces up to 150 kg of honey per summer. To collect 1 kg of honey, a bee must visit about 10 million flowers and bring up to 100 thousand portions of nectar.

Fatherlessness in the world of bees

Male bees do not inherit a second set of genes from their father. They remain half-clones of the uterus. Females have two copies of the gene, necessarily different alleles. Males have only one copy. Almost a fifth of all animal species, including all ants, bees and wasps, have a similar sex determination system; but the specific mechanism and participation of different genes in this process have not yet been studied. And the study of this process can explain the complex social system these animals.

Three social groups in the hive

Bees, like many insects, go through four stages of development: egg, caterpillar, pupa and adult. From 10,000 to 50,000 individuals gather in a colony. Bees have three social groups. These include the queen, sterile female workers, male drones and young bees in development. The queen who lays eggs and is the mother of all the bees in the hive, in wildlife mates only once with a male to obtain two sets of genes that she will pass on to her female offspring. Worker bees are these very females. There are also male drones in the hive. Their only function is sexual. They do not have a second set of genes from their father and are half-clones of the queen. However, sometimes in breeding, where bees are bred to achieve certain traits, eggs can accidentally be fertilized with two copies of a gene for the same allele. In this case, sterile males are born. Worker bees locate and kill the larvae of sterile males, and such mating failures can kill entire hives. Each colony builds a hive consisting of hexagonal wax honeycombs. The wax itself is a mass secreted from the glands of worker bees. Honey and pollen are stored in the honeycombs - the food reserves of the hive, and young bees develop there.

Of all the bees, only workers leave the hive in search of food. The bee is equipped with a sting, but once stung, it dies. The average lifespan of a worker bee is 6 weeks. Drones are larger in size than worker bees and do not have a stinger. They are looked after by worker bees and do not fly out of the hive. They live for eight weeks. Their only purpose is to mate with a young queen. In the fall, the drones usually leave the colony and die, otherwise they are driven out by worker bees.

The queen lays eggs. In the right conditions, she can lay more than 1,000 eggs per day. Her life expectancy is 4 years. Outwardly, it resembles a worker bee, which it surpasses in size and has a highly elongated abdomen.

Over the course of a season, the colony grows and splits into two or more swarms. The queen and worker bees immediately leave the colony, often landing on the nearest tree in a clumsy state suitable place for a new colony. Swarming occurs in spring and summer. The young queen establishes a colony, mates, and then begins laying eggs. Swarming bees carry reserves of honey from the hive with them and therefore do not sting. Then they choose a place for the colony and build honeycombs into which they unload honey. Having gotten rid of the burden, they become aggressive again.

The most dangerous bee
One breed of honey bee, Apis mellifera scutellata, descended from an African subspecies, not only attacks when provoked, but persistently pursues the offender. Its venom is no stronger than that of other bees, but since it stings repeatedly, its stings can be fatal. In 1956, the African honey bee was introduced from Tanzania to Brazil to improve the honey production of local bees. It was assumed that the subspecies formed as a result of crossing would be more productive, having inherited the qualities of the tropical ancestor. However, it was not possible to breed a more honey-bearing hybrid, but the new bees inherited the aggressiveness of their African ancestor. The new kind called the Africanized honey bee. These bees are gradually replacing the peace-loving European bees.

Hybrids hatch from eggs several days earlier than normal bees, they have a higher percentage of hatched young bees per comb cell, while European bees hatch larger number cells for honey Hybrids are smaller than ordinary bees, but not by much. The main feature of hybrids, like their African ancestors, is great aggressiveness. If danger is detected, these bees send a squad of worker bees to protect the nest, and the number of the squad is 3-4 times higher than that of ordinary bees. They attack the intruder at a much greater distance from the hive than the European bee.

Fatality from bee stings
It was established that people died from 100-300 bee stings, but the lethal dose for an adult is 500 - 1,100 bee stings.

If you are stung by a bee
Remove the sting. If there are several stings, remove most of them. If this is not possible, count how many bees have stung you so you can report it to your doctor. Wash the swollen area with soap and water. Place ice on the sore area.

Why are bees bred?

The honey bee not only produces honey, but also plays a key role in plant pollination. The insect is of interest to biologists who are looking for new methods of human diseases, such as allergies, as well as those studying the characteristics of social behavior.

Bees are trained to search by smell

Biologists from the University of Montana have been training bees to search by smell for several years, using the classic training method: do the job, get a reward. The bees are given water and sugar as a prize. Having learned a new scent, a bee passes on its knowledge to its relatives. Thus, in a couple of hours, the entire hive can be sent to search for a new smell, which will swarm, looking, instead of flowers, for dynamite, nitroglycerin, 2,4-dinitrotoluene and the like.

Bees are looking for explosives
Scientists working for the Pentagon are training bees to detect explosives. Bees are much more sensitive than dogs; they detect explosives 99% of the time. This is, of course, great, but how will the military know that a bee has found explosives? This work is at its most early stage, but many difficulties have already emerged: bees are still not dogs, they refuse to “work” at night and in inclement weather, and it is also difficult to imagine a swarm checking luggage at the airport. Hives of bees trained to search for explosives are planned to be placed near all important checkpoints so that the insects can take action against potential terrorists at any moment.

Ancient bees were not much different from modern ones
The ancestors of the tropical bee Cretotrigona prisca were found in amber layers in the Yucatan. These bees are very similar in structure and metabolic characteristics to modern ones. Therefore, scientists assume that they required the same temperature to exist as their current descendants. The metabolism of today's bees is designed for temperatures of 31-34°C. At the same temperature, the plants they need for food bloom best.

Lifespan of bees
Among domestic bees, the queen lives for 3 years, with a maximum of 5 years. But a worker bee lives 40 days in summer and 9 months in winter.

Now there are about 20 thousand species of bees in the world.

Firstly, according to the laws of aerodynamics, Bees should not be able to fly, but they manage to fly at speeds of up to 65 km/h: a bee not loaded with nectar can reach a speed of 65 km/h, but they rarely reach such a speed, so they often write about observed speeds of 24 - 32 km/h.

Secondly, Bees are not capable of sharply gaining height; if necessary, to overcome a high obstacle, Bees gain height by flying in a spiral.

Thirdly, Bees have two pairs of wings and make up to 440 wing beats per second, and these are not simple up-and-down beats, but synchronized beats with a complex trajectory. More precisely, up to 300 beats per second when it flies with honey, and up to 440 when it flies without cargo.

Fourthly, during flight, a Bee can carry a load reaching 3/4 of its body weight (about 75 milligrams).

Fifthly, from intense flight work, the bees’ wings, especially at the tips, become frayed. Bees with such wings fly poorly, they are usually expelled from the bee colony, doomed to death.

Sixth, the sense of smell of Bees is 1000 times sharper than the sense of smell of humans. Bees detect the scents of flowers up to a kilometer away. It is possible that this partly explains the fact that most Bees collect nectar and pollen at a distance of 600 - 700 meters from the Apiary, and not near it. Although, in theory, Bees should collect honey where the Bee can most quickly collect a portion of nectar.

Nothing comes without difficulty to bees. And no other insect over the past 50 million years has been able to repeat those unique actions that occur over thin walls honeycombs in the hive. From this article you will learn about many interesting facts related to these tireless workers.

Bees are a superfamily of flying insects of the suborder Stalk-bellied order Hymenoptera, related to wasps and ants. The science of bees is called apiology.

There are about 20 thousand species of bees and about 10 thousand species of Spheciformes. They can be found on all continents except Antarctica.

Bees have adapted to feed on nectar and pollen, using nectar primarily as an energy source and pollen for proteins and other nutrients.

Bees have a long proboscis, which they use to suck nectar from plants. They also have antennae, each of which consists of 13 segments in males and 12 segments in females.

All bees have two pairs of wings, the back pair being smaller in size than the front; Only in a few species of one sex or caste the wings are very short, making the flight of the bee difficult or impossible. Many bee species have been little studied.

The size of bees ranges from 2.1 mm in the dwarf bee (Trigona minima) to 39 mm in the species Megachile pluto, found in Indonesia.

The wax produced by bees has different purposes: cover (protects bees from moisture) and construction (used for the construction of honeycombs in which worker bees deposit honey, pollen, and also breed offspring).

Bees are not only wax casters, but also first-class architects. They make honeycombs from wax, the hexagonal cells of which serve as very convenient bins for honey, storage facilities for bee bread and cozy cradles for offspring.

Honeycombs are made up of cells. Depending on their purpose, they come in four types: bee, transitional, drone, and queen. Most of the cells are bees; worker bees are hatched in them, and food is stored in them - honey and beebread.

The shape of the honeycomb cells is hexagonal with a triangular bottom. The bottom of one chamber simultaneously serves as part of the bottoms of three chambers on the opposite side of the honeycomb. The transverse diameter of the chambers of a newly constructed cell cell is on average 5.37 mm.

Thus, for 1 sq. m. cell contains 3 thousand cells. The depth of each of them is 10-12 mm (southern bees have less, northern bees have more). The chambers have the form of equilateral hexagonal hollow prisms.

They're in large quantities in parallel rows they are strengthened horizontally by their cavity on the wax mediastinum sheet and are located as follows: two parallel walls of the prism stand vertically, two pairs of other walls are inclined to the horizontal plane at an angle of 30 degrees.

At the base, the position of the cell in the honeycomb is horizontal, then it acquires a bend upward. Charles Darwin, who studied the life of bees for a long time, emphasized that “only a limited person can consider the amazing structure of the honeycomb without being amazed.”

According to many outstanding mathematicians, bees in practice solved a very difficult problem: to arrange cells of the appropriate volume in order to place in them the largest possible amount of honey, spending on their construction the smallest amount of precious wax.

Freshly built honeycombs have White color with a creamy tint and contain about 100% pure wax.

Honeycombs in which bees and drones have been hatched several times gradually become dark yellow, then brown, and finally completely black.

Yellow honeycombs contain 75% wax, brown honeycombs contain 60% wax, and dark honeycombs contain 40% wax.

Honeycombs without honey and brood are called dry.

The wax protruding from the wax glands hardens on wax mirrors in the form of tiny plates, which serve as excellent building material. Bees use them to build cells for honey, pollen and for the development of offspring.

After the offspring hatch, the excrement of the larvae and their cocoons remain at the bottom of the cells. Bees clean cells to hatch subsequent generations, but they cannot completely empty them.

Therefore, over time, the honeycombs darken, the cells become smaller, and the offspring bred in such honeycombs are small and less viable.

In addition, in old honeycombs that have served for about 3 years, wax moth larvae and other pests infest faster. Therefore, it is necessary to cull old honeycombs annually.

How many of us know that a bee older than a person for 50-60 thousand years? Already primitive was familiar with honey and loved it. And scientists and doctors of antiquity noticed that using this product prolongs life.

One of the Egyptian medical books, which was written more than 3,500 years ago, provides many tips on how to use honey to treat stomach, lung, kidney, eye, skin and many other diseases.

Eastern medicine also did not ignore honey. According to the most ancient Chinese medical book, “long-term consumption of honey strengthens the will, gives lightness to the body, preserves youth, and increases life expectancy.”

More than four thousand years ago, people began to treat with honey in India. However, honey has long ceased to be a means only traditional medicine: stepping over the threshold modern clinic, it is successfully used for treatment today.

Scientists have come to the conclusion: honey not only has a beneficial effect on increasing the resistance of a delicate child’s body to numerous infections, but is also very useful in adulthood.

After all, honey contains copper, iron, manganese, silicon dioxide, calcium, chlorine, sodium, phosphorus, aluminum, and magnesium.

Interestingly, the amount of some mineral salts in honey is almost the same as in human serum. At the same time, honey is an excellent medium in which vitamins are preserved much better than in fruits and vegetables.

For example, cut spinach loses 50 percent of the vitamin C it contains within 24 hours. Fruits also lose a significant amount of vitamins during storage. Honey retains all the vitamins that nutritionists consider essential for health, even during long-term storage.

Honey is also valued for its healing properties. Where else can you find such an effective sedative that has a beneficial effect on nervous system easily excitable people and does not cause harm to the body?

Doctors recommend eating 30 grams of honey in the morning and lunchtime, and 40 grams of honey in the evening.. And it’s hard to think of a better sleeping pill than natural honey. It has long been known that a glass of honey water (3 teaspoons of honey per glass of water), drunk in the evening half an hour before bedtime, will ensure a restful sleep.

Honey has a beneficial effect on the stomach and reduces sharp, irritating coughs. Honey inhalations are recommended for diseases of the upper respiratory tract. If you have a runny nose, you can mix honey in half with water and drop 2-3 drops into your nose three times a day.

Chewing honeycomb will increase your immunity to respiratory diseases. In children's sanatoriums in Switzerland, anemic and malnourished children are treated with bee honey, since, according to doctors, honey quickly increases the hemoglobin content in the blood.

In one of the American Institutes of Hygiene, the only medicine for treating weak and anemic children is natural bee honey with milk. For kidney diseases, honey is recommended as a therapeutic and preventive remedy.

Some doctors advise taking 80-100 grams of honey per day with lemon juice or rosehip decoction. Honey contains a lot of easily digestible sugars, but despite this you should not consume it in large quantities.

Excess of easily digestible sugars in the body leads to their conversion into fats and can also contribute to the development of diabetes. In a word, don’t forget: “Honey is good, but not a handful in your mouth.”

By the way, not only honey is healing, but also such a beekeeping product as bee venom. It is obtained without causing any harm to the bees.

Preparations from bee venom are used for polyarthritis, radiculitis, inflammation of the sciatic nerve, intercostal neuralgia, bronchial asthma, migraines, when drug treatment does not produce results.

The most effective way is to inject the poison with the help of the bees themselves. But before starting treatment, you need to check the patient’s sensitivity to bee venom using a biological test.

Usually the test is done in two stages, usually on the lower back. The skin is wiped with alcohol and ether, then a bee is applied, it digs into the skin, after 6-10 seconds the sting is removed. During this time, a very small amount of poison enters the body.

The next day, a urine test is done for protein and sugar to check for allergies. If everything is fine, the test is repeated, although this time the sting is removed after a minute.

If the second urine test is normal, then treatment can begin: the bee is taken with tweezers or two fingers by the back and abdomen and applied to the sore spot. The sting is removed after an hour.

On the first day the bee stings only once, on the second - twice, and so on up to 10 days. Then they give the patient the opportunity to rest from the “biting doctor” for three days and continue treatment, applying three bees daily.

The course of treatment includes 180 stings. Once a week you need to do a blood and urine test. It is also good to eat 50 grams of honey per day during treatment.

24 interesting facts from the life of bees:

1. The beekeeper does not calm the bees with smoke, but creates an imitation of a fire. Bees, being the ancient inhabitants of the forest, pounce on honey when smoke appears in order to stock up on it for the long journey.

When the bee's belly is filled with honey and does not bend, it cannot use its sting.

2. To obtain a spoonful of honey (30 g), 200 bees must collect nectar during the day during the bribe. Approximately the same number of bees should be engaged in receiving nectar and processing it in the hive.

At the same time, some bees intensively ventilate the nest so that excess water evaporates faster from the nectar. And to seal honey in 75 bee cells, bees need to allocate one gram of wax.

3. A bee in the hive performs a “circular” dance if it has found a source of food at a short distance from the apiary. The “waggling” dance of a bee signals a honey plant or pollen plant located at a more distant distance.

4. To obtain one kilogram of honey, bees must make up to 4,500 flights and take nectar from 6-10 million flowers. A strong family can collect 5-10 kg of honey (10-20 kg of nectar) per day.

5. A bee can fly almost 8 km away from the hive and accurately find its way back. However, such long flights are dangerous for the life of bees and are unprofitable from the point of view of the productivity of their work.

6. A bee swarm can weigh up to 7-8 kg, it consists of 50-60 thousand bees with 2-3 kg of honey in their crops. In inclement weather, bees can feed on honey reserves for 8 days.

7. In one cell of the honeycomb, bees deposit up to 18 pollen weighing 140-180 mg. One average pollen contains about 100 thousand dust particles, the weight of one pollen is from 0.008 to 0.015 g. In summer pollen is heavier than in spring and autumn.

Bees bring up to 400 pollen per day, and during the season a bee colony collects 25-30, and sometimes up to 55 kg of pollen.

8. In a bee colony, up to 25-30% of flying bees usually work collecting pollen. They bring 100-400 g (less often up to 1-2 kg) of pollen per day.

9. Many plants secrete both nectar and pollen. But there are also plants from which bees collect only pollen. These are hazel, poppy, rose hips, lupine, corn, etc.

10. The nectar of most plants contains three types of sugars - sucrose, glucose and fructose. Their ratio in the nectar of different plants is not the same.

Honey, which bees produce from nectar with a high glucose content (rapeseed, mustard, rapeseed, sunflower, etc.), crystallizes quickly.

If the nectar contains more fructose (white and yellow acacia, edible chestnut), then the resulting honey crystallizes more slowly.

11. Nectar containing a mixture of sugars is more attractive to bees than nectar with the same concentration of sugar alone.

12. During the flowering of raspberries and fireweed in the taiga zone of Central Siberia, the weight of the control hive increased by 14–17 kg per day, while for buckwheat this increase did not exceed 8–9 kg.

13. The highest honey yields of nectar are obtained from Far East and in Siberia.

There are known cases when, during the flowering period of linden in the Far East, the weight gain of the control hive reached 30-33 kg per day.

Individual bee families in Siberia collect 420, and in the Far East - 330-340 kg of honey per season.

14. With a bee colony weighing 3 kg, only 40-50% of hive bees take part in collecting nectar. In one flight, these bees can bring 400 - 500 g of nectar to the hive.

The remaining bees in such a family are busy raising brood, building new combs, receiving and processing nectar into honey and other hive work.

15.V strong family Having 5 kg of bees, 60% of its total composition is occupied in collecting nectar.

If, during the main bribe, the queen is limited in laying eggs, then the freed nurse bees switch to honey collection. Then up to 70% of the bees in the family will be engaged in honey collection.

In one flight they are able to bring about 2 kg of nectar to the hive.

16. To fill a honey sac containing 40 mg of nectar, a bee must visit at least 200 sunflower, sainfoin or mustard flowers, 15-20 flowers in one flight garden crops, 130-150 flowers of winter rapeseed, coriander or china.

17. On a rough surface, a bee is capable of dragging a load that exceeds 320 times the weight of its body (a horse carries a load equal to the weight of its own body).

18. Bees that have outlived their short life die in the hive only in winter, and in summer old bees, sensing the approach of death, leave the hive and die in the wild.

19. Swarming bees usually do not sting. Therefore, you should not overuse smoke when collecting a swarm and planting it. The only exceptions are swarms that left the hive several days ago. However, too much smoke can make them angry too.

20. The queen bee never stings a person, even when he hurts her. But when she meets her rival, she furiously uses her sting.

21. To raise a thousand larvae, 100 g of honey, 50 g of pollen and 30 g of water are required. The annual need for pollen is up to 30 kg for each bee colony.

22. Instinct is the only and undivided “master” of the bee family. The most important and highly perfect cycle of procurement of raw materials and the completed production of various products of the entire “bee association” consisting of 40-60 thousand worker bees are subordinated to him.

23. The bee cell is the most rational in nature geometric shape vessel, its construction requires the least amount of materials (1.3 g of wax per 100 bee cells), and the cell has no equal in terms of structural strength and capacity.

24. The maximum release of nectar by honey plants occurs at an air temperature of 18 to 25 degrees Celsius. When the air temperature is above 38 degrees, most plants stop producing nectar.

With a sharp cold snap, the secretion of nectar decreases, and in honey plants such as linden and buckwheat, it completely stops.

I will gradually supplement this page with interesting facts from the life of bees. Here's the addition:

During the honey collection season, a strong family of bees travels a distance equal to the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

Scientists have found that melittin, a toxin found in bee venom, can stop the spread of HIV in the blood. By destroying the protective shell of the HIV virus, the toxin can kill it. Interestingly, the poison does not harm normal cells.

Honey bees recognize human facial features. At the same time, bees capture all elements of the face - lips, eyebrows and ears. The researchers called this process "configurational processing." It is possible that this will help scientists involved in pattern recognition develop their technologies.

Bee maturation time
A queen bee develops from egg to adult in 17 days, a worker bee takes 21 days, and a drone takes 24 days.

Why do bees need upper jaws?
In connection with feeding on nectar and pollen, the role of the upper jaws of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) as organs for grinding solid food receives a new purpose.

A worker bee uses its upper jaws to shape the wax when making honeycombs. The drone uses them to gnaw a way out of the sealed cell, and the queen, in addition, kills her rivals with them.

How many bees are in the hive
The average hive can contain up to 60,000 – 120,000 bees.

Bees have five eyes.
Three at the top of the head and two at the front.

Pass to the hive
Bees have many enemies and “freeloaders”, so the entrance to the hive is reliably guarded by guards who are ready to attack an uninvited guest at any moment. No bee can enter someone else's hive. Each hive has a special smell that is not detectable by humans.

Each bee stores this scent in a special cavity in its body. Flying up to the entrance, the bee opens it and presents the smell to the guards as its business card or pass.

Various types of work in the hive
A worker bee performs various types of work during its life. The first time-consuming job is to clean the cells in which the queen lays eggs, as well as to heat and ventilate the hive.

Then the worker bees move on to feeding the young bees and receiving honey from the foraging bees. Only after this the worker bees begin to make independent flights for honey. A worker bee lives 26-40 days. There are about 80 thousand individuals in the bee family.

In order to produce 500 g of honey, one bee needs to fly from the hive to the flower and back 10 million times. And to make 1 kg of honey, a bee needs to collect nectar from 19 million flowers.

Of course, a kilogram of honey is collected by many bees. But one bee has a lot of work: a worker bee visits an average of 7 thousand flowers per day.

Bee vision
Bees do not distinguish the color red. They see it as dark gray or black. But they perceive ultraviolet rays as color, although for humans it is only darkness.

What colors do bees like?
Bees have an innate preference for purple and blue-green colors. Flower-shaped structures of various colors and shapes were placed in the maze. As soon as the weaves were launched into the maze, they immediately rushed off in the yellow and blue patterns.

However, it turns out that insects cannot be fooled by color alone. If the bees did not receive the preferred color of nectar or pollen from the “flowers,” they immediately began to explore other offers.

Thus, compared to hunger, the visual “sympathies” of bees are in the background.

The bee genome has been deciphered
Deciphering the genome of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) took the team of Richard Gibbs, PhD, a year of painstaking work and about $8 million.

It turned out that the bee genome is ten times smaller than the human genome and contains about 300 million base pairs of DNA. Now scientists have to find out what place certain genes occupy in the sequence, and what exactly they do.

Swarm departure
In the middle of summer, before the young queen leaves the cell, the old queen and some of the worker bees rush to leave the hive. A swarm of bees goes in search of a new home.

Shortest mating behavior
The honey bee Apis mellifera mates in flight, the female rises into the air, the males rush after her, together they resemble a comet and its tail.

The right to mate belongs to the winner who catches up with her, but he pays with his life: mating occurs so quickly that after mating the male does not have time to remove his phallus, and it remains in the body of the uterus, the male dies.

Harvesting honey
One bee colony produces up to 150 kg of honey per summer. To collect 1 kg of honey, a bee must visit about 10 million flowers and bring up to 100 thousand portions of nectar.

Drones are larger than worker bees and do not have a stinger. They are looked after by worker bees and do not fly out of the hive. They live for eight weeks. Their only purpose is to mate with a young queen. In the fall, the drones usually leave the colony and die, otherwise they are driven out by worker bees.

Over the course of a season, the colony grows and splits into two or more swarms. The queen and worker bees immediately leave the colony, often landing on a nearby tree in search of a suitable location for a new colony.

Swarming occurs in spring and summer. The young queen establishes a colony, mates, and then begins laying eggs.

Swarming bees carry reserves of honey with them from the hive and therefore do not sting. Then they choose a place for the colony and build honeycombs into which they unload honey. Having gotten rid of the burden, they become aggressive again.

The most dangerous bee
One breed of honey bee, Apis mellifera scutellata, descended from an African subspecies, not only attacks if provoked, but stubbornly pursues the offender. Its venom is no stronger than that of other bees, but since it stings repeatedly, its stings can be fatal.

In 1956, the African honey bee was introduced from Tanzania to Brazil to increase the honey production of local bees. It was assumed that the subspecies formed as a result of crossing would be more productive, having inherited the qualities of the tropical ancestor.

However, it was not possible to breed a more honey-bearing hybrid, but the new bees inherited the aggressiveness of their African ancestor. The new species is called the Africanized honey bee. These bees are gradually replacing the peace-loving European bees.

Hybrids hatch from eggs several days earlier than normal bees, they have a higher percentage of hatched young bees per comb cell, while European bees allocate a larger number of cells for honey. Hybrids are smaller than ordinary bees, but not by much.

The main feature of hybrids, like their African ancestors, is great aggressiveness. If danger is detected, these bees send a squad of worker bees to protect the nest, and the number of the squad is 3-4 times higher than that of ordinary bees.

They attack the intruder at a much greater distance from the hive than the European bee.

Fatality from bee stings
It was established that people died from 100-300 bee stings, but the lethal dose for an adult is 500 - 1,100 bee stings.

The queen bee never stings a person, even if there is danger from him, but she bites her rival with pleasure.

The bees are afraid mobile phones . It is known that they cannot find their way home if there is a cellular telephone. German scientists have proven that electromagnetic radiation interferes with the bees' own navigation system. As a result, bees are lost and some even die.

I invite everyone to speak out in

Bees see very poorly and are unable to distinguish objects located further than one and a half meters. But their natural myopia is generously compensated by their sense of smell. Striped insects fly precisely to smells.

Honey production is hard work. To get just 100 g of sweet delicacy, this worker must fly around an average of 1 million flowers. Through a special channel - the proboscis - the collected nectar enters a special bee organ - the honey ventricle.

Not all of them can sting a person, as many mistakenly think. The queen bee never shows aggression towards people. But he stings his rivals without sparing.

Bees do not collect honey for pleasure - they care about healthy offspring and their nutrition. To feed a thousand larvae, insects must collect 100 grams of honey, fifty grams of pollen and 30 grams of water.

The bees “didn’t graduate from university” and are not trained in mathematics. However, they manage to create the most perfect geometric figure in the world of wildlife - a hexagonal cell that makes up a honeycomb.

The lifespan of each worker bee is no more than 40 days. During this time, she manages to complete several important missions. First he does the “dirty work”: he cleans the cells in which the queen will lay eggs. Then he makes sure that the hive is warm and that enough food is supplied there. fresh air. And only at the end of her life does she fulfill her main calling - extracting honey.

Judging by the number of deaths caused by bee stings, these insects are much more dangerous to humans than snakes.

The drone, the “husband” of the queen bee, mates with its “half” in the air. It takes the couple five seconds to do everything. Immediately after the end of the process, the male loses his reproductive organ, which remains inside the queen bee, and dies.

To collect as much pollen as possible, they make the most of all hairline on the body. Even the hairs growing from their eyes become “collectors.” Collecting pollen makes the effect of the electric field much easier. The fact is that each individual is a carrier of a negative charge, and pollen has positive charge. Thus, when an insect lands on a flower, its contents “stick” to it. After the bee's visit, the polarity of the empty flower changes, and another insect that flies up to collect it realizes in time that the plant is still useless.

There are real wars between bees and hornets. For example, the Japanese, who breed not their own bees, but more productive European bees, in order to obtain honey, can very often observe how “European hives” are attacked by local striped robbers - huge hornets. However, there is no need to interfere: guests can fend for themselves. They surround each raider, enclosing him in a kind of ball, and then, working with their muscles, create a temperature inside that is fatal for the hornet: + 47°.

The sweet treat that bees produce attracts many. But not everyone can handle it. For example, honeyguide birds do not risk climbing into the hive themselves. To taste the honey, they resort to cunning: they lead a person, a bear, or something else to the hive. Living being, which can open a bee house. And then they patiently wait for the “invader” to take his share, so that afterward they can feast on the crumbs from someone else’s lunch.

Bees are able to detect mines, as well as other explosive devices or substances, by smell. That's why they consist of " official service"at the Pentagon.