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Report a Honey Bee Swarm
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Utah Department of Agriculture and Food
Utah Beekeeper License Application
Laws and Regulations Related to Beekeeping in Utah
County Bee Inspectors
Utah Extension: Bees and Other Pollinators
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Association members are invited to submit a few paragraphs about a memorable or
humorous beekeeping experience or to share your beekeeping wisdom. Submit your story (with photos if you have them) to the
webmaster.
They will be published here. |
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Honey Bee Trivia |
- The honey bee has been around for millions of years.
- Honey bees, scientifically also known as Apis mellifera, are
environmentally friendly and are vital as pollinators.
- It is the only insect that produces food eaten by man.
- 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.
- Honey bees 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, a nectar pouch, and a
stomach.
- Honey bees have 170 odorant receptors, compared with only 62
in fruit flies and 79 in mosquitoes. Their exceptional olfactory
abilities include kin recognition signals, social communication
within the hive, and odor recognition for finding food. Their
sense of smell was so precise that it could differentiate
hundreds of different floral varieties and tell whether a flower
carried pollen or nectar from meters away.
- The honey bee's wings stroke incredibly fast, about 200
beats per second, thus making their famous, distinctive buzz. A
honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles
per hour.
- The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of
honey in her lifetime.
- A hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles, the equivalent of
three orbits around the earth to collect 1 kg of honey.
- It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee's flight around
the world.
- A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection
trip.
- The bee's brain is oval in shape and only about the size of
a sesame seed, yet it has remarkable capacity to learn and
remember things and is able to make complex calculations on
distance travelled and foraging efficiency.
- A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honeybees and one
queen. Worker honey bees are female, live for about 6 weeks and
do all the work.
- The queen bee can live up to 5 years and is the only bee
that lays eggs. She is the busiest in the summer months, when
the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to
2500 eggs per day.
- Larger than the worker bees, the male honey bees (also
called drones), have no stinger and do no work at all. All they
do is mating.
- Each honey bee colony has a unique odor for members'
identification.
- Only worker bees sting, and only if they feel threatened and
they die once they sting. Queens have a stinger, but they don't
leave the hive to help defend it.
- It is estimated that 1100 honey bee stings are required to
be fatal.
- Honey bees communicate with one another by "dancing".
- During winter, honey bees feed on the honey they collected
during the warmer months. They form a tight cluster in their
hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.
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You know you're a beekeeper when...
By John Caldeira, with contributions from many others. |
- The windshield of your vehicle has at least two yellow dots
on it.
- You have answers ready for questions about Africanized bees
and the value of local honey in preventing allergies.
- Year eagerly await the phone call from the post office
asking you to please come pick up your bees.
- You check out all the honey labels and prices at the
supermarket.
- You've gone through the supermarket checkout line buying
nothing more than a big load of sugar, and maybe some Crisco.
- You've estimated just how much money you spent to control
mites.
- You pick up matches at restaurants, even though you don't
smoke.
- Your friends and neighbors think you are the answer to every
swarm and bees-in-the-wall problem. Then, there are the calls
about wasps, yellow jackets, and hornets!
- You are keenly aware of the first and last freezes of each
winter.
- There is propolis on the steering wheel of your vehicle and
the bottom of your boots.
- There is a bucket of something in your garage that can only
be good for smoker fuel.
- You are called "the Bee Man," or "the Bee Lady" by a lot of
people who don't know your name.
- You know the bloom period of more local flowers than the
state horticulturist.
- You welcome a rainy weekend if it will stimulate nectar
production.
- You don't mind driving home with a few honey bees inside
your vehicle.
- Your family and friends know exactly what they're going to
get for Christmas.
- You don't mow the lawn because the bees are working the
weeds.
- You drive down a road and find yourself evaluating the
roadside flowers for their honey-producing potential.
- You pull over and check the bees on the wildflowers just to
see if they are your bees, and -- you can tell
the difference.
- You come home smelling like a camp fire, and you haven't
been camping.
- You saw Ulee's Gold and didn't think there were enough shots
of the bees.
- You overhear your 9-year-old daughter explaining to her
friends how to tie a trucker's hitch.
- The school principal calls to ask that you never again let
your child take a drone tied with a thread to school for show
and tell.
- You never stop marveling at these wonderful creatures.
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You know you're married to a beekeeper when... |
- You spend at least one day a week on your hands and knees
with a sharp knife scraping wax and propolis off your kitchen
floor.
- You've ever used bee boxes as furniture in your house, for
coffee tables, chairs, night stands, and storage boxes.
- You mow around mountains of bee equipment that never seems
to make it to the barn.
- You plan weddings, child birth, surgery and funerals around
queen-rearing season and honey extracting time.
- When buying a new truck, your spouse checks weight loads and
measures the bed to see how many hives he can fit in it.
- You get stung by the bee that was clinging to your husband's
bee suit when you picked it up to wash it.
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