Bees are of immeasurable value to our environment.

Bees are pollinators vital to our food chain.

Without bees one third of the food we eat would not be available.

Bees, like other insects, are part of a food chain.

The harvest from honeybees of honey, pollen, wax and propolis (an antiseptic resinous substance obtained from some trees) has nutritional, craft, manufacturing, and medical applications.

Pollination by bees is important for genetic sustainability.

Bees are in danger of disappearing from our environment.

Farming practices continue to disturb the natural habitats and forage of solitary bumblebees at a rate which gives them little chance for re-establishment.

The honeybee is under attack from the varroa mite and it is only the treatment and care provided by beekeepers that is keeping colonies alive.

Most wild honeybee colonies have died out as a result of this disease.

In Summer, a typical hive of honeybees might contain:-   

 

1 queen 250 drones 20,000 female foragers 40,000 female house-bees 5,000 to 7,000 eggs 7,000 to 11,000 larvae being fed 16,000 to 24,000 larvae developing into adults in sealed cells

Bees eat pollen to produce bee milk, often called royal jelly, which they feed continuously to the queen and to larvae, for just 3 days, after they hatch from eggs.

 Bees eat honey primarily to fuel their wing muscles.

To collect a pound of honey (half a kilo) a bee might have to fly a distance equivalent to twice round the world.

This is likely to involve more than 10,000 flower visits on perhaps 500 foraging trips.

A colony can use 32kg of pollen each year involving over 300,000 foraging trips. On each trip a bee could return with half a million grains of pollen.

The pollen is used by the bees as their protein food for building bee body parts. 

To make 1 kg of wax, it is estimated that a bee must consume 4 kg of honey. 

They secrete wax scales from 4 pairs of glands under their abdomen, each wax scale weighing about 1 mg.

It is estimated that about 80,000 wax scales are necessary to make a single honeycomb.