Bees are everywhere and now that it’s spring, we will be seeing a lot more of them. They are an important part of the ecosystem and without them, our planet would look a lot more bleak.  

Bees are amazing little insects with so much potential, here are some unusual bee facts that you probably didn’t know:

• Florida is home to about 315 different species of bees 
• Bees are possessive about their homes, especially honey bees
• One single sting can release a pheromone that alerts that entire colony of danger
• To make one pound of honey, honey bees must gather nectar from two million flowers and fly about 90,000 miles (which is 3 times around the planet)
• A bee’s brain is about the size of a sesame seed, but they have a remarkable memory and a great ability to learn things such as complex calculations for distance travelled.
• Bees communicate with each other by dancing.  
• 1/12th of a teaspoon in how much the average bee will make in their lifetime
• One colony of bees consists of about 20,000-60,000 honey bees and only has one queen. The workers are female and they do all the work for about 6 weeks and then die. The queen however, can live up to 5 years and she’s the only one who can lay eggs.  She can lay up to 2500 eggs per day. 
• The male bee (known as a drone) does not have to work and they do not have a stinger. They spend their life mating. 
• Honey has been produced the same way by honey bees for 150 million years
• The honey bee is the only insect that is able to produce food that can be eaten by humans
• A jar of honey was once found by an explorer that came from an Egyptian tomb more than 2,000 years old. The explorer said the honey was delicious. 
• When you hear the sound of a bee buzzing, the sound is actually coming from their wings. Their wings can beat 11,400 times a minute. 
• There are 16,000 species of bees. The most common type is the honey bee. 
• Until the late 1660’s, the queen bee was known as king. It wasn’t until Jan Swammerdam, a Ducth scientist dissected the hive’s biggest bee and found her ovaries.
•  Bees can fly at an average speed of 15 miles per hour
• When a new queen is born, she quickly kills the other hatched and/or unhatched queens within the hive 
• An old wives tale claims that when a bee enters your home, it means a visitor is on their way. However, if you kill the bee, it won’t be a pleasant visitor. 
• Bees are becoming more at risk for extinction 
• They are amazing pollinators. 

Now that you know a little more about bees and how interesting they are, you probably want to do what you can to save them since they in return help mother nature flourish. The best way to do that is to start with your home. There are many people who have found bee hives within their yard, shed, or even in old cars and call an exterminator immediately. The problem with this approach is that the bees die. Instead, choose another option and have the bee hive removed by professionals. 

Wildout Animal and Pest Removal can help you to safely remove a hive from your home so that not only you are safe, but the bees remain safe too!