September is National Honey Month and to celebrate, here are some fun facts you may not know about honey:
- Honey is 80% sugars and 20%
water. - Honeybees fly at 15 miles per hour
and will travel approximately three
miles from their hive. - Bees maintain a temperature of 92-
93 degrees in their hive regardless
of whether the outside temperature
is -40 or 110 degrees. - About 300 bees have to visit two
million flowers to make one pound
of honey. - Honey is the only food that contains
all the substances necessary to
sustain life, including water. - Worker bees are all females.
- Male bees are called drones. They
don’t sting and their only job is to
mate. - Honey comes as extracted, liquid,
creamed, or in the comb. - The queen may lay 600-800 or even
1,500 eggs each day during her
three or four year lifetime. - Bees produce honey as food stores
for the hive during the winter when
flowers aren’t blooming. - Honey never spoils. Archeologists
have excavated ancient Egyptian
tombs that are thousands of years
old and found honey that is still
well preserved and edible. - Honeybees never sleep.
- Honeybees are responsible for
approximately 80% of all fruit,
vegetable and seed crops in the US. - A typical bee hive can make up to
400 pounds of honey per year. - Bee colonies may contain 40,000 to
60,000 bees during the late spring
or early summer. - Honeybees are the only insect that
produces food for humans. - There are more than 300 different
honey varietals found in the US, all
with a unique color and flavor.