Let’s take a look at some of the unusual aspects of a bee’s life.

• During its lifetime, a bee will make from 0.5-1 gram of honey. In other words, 1000-2000 bees have to work to produce one kg of honey.
  
• Approximately 4-5 kg of nectar are needed to produce one kg of honey!
  
• For every gram of nectar, a bee will work for 3 days!
  
• Bees will consume approximately 8 kg honey to produce 1 kg of wax!
  
• The bee’s flight radius in order to find food is 3-4 km. It can reach up to 8 km in periods of scarcity.
  
• With the energy contained in 28 g of honey, a bee could fly around the world!
  
• Bees fly with a speed of approximately 30 km/h!
  
• The yearly nutritional needs of an average-sized bee is approximately 22 kg of pollen, corresponding to 70 kg of honey. In order to collect this amount of food, one million flights for pollen and four million flights for nectar are made in the course of the year.
  
• - The hexagonal shape of the honeycomb cells makes the most of the space available with regards to economizing the materials used, capacity and stability!
  

  
  
  Of the illustrations above, A,B and C leave gaps between the cells, therefore wasting valuable space.
  Among the D,E and F patterns, F is the most economical since it uses the least building material!

• In 15 days of wax production, the honeybee loses 20% of the protein in its body!
  
• Queen bee larvae are fed exclusively royal jelly, a gland secretion. In contrast, worker bee larvae are fed royal jelly for the first 3 days followed by a honey/pollen mixture afterward.
  
• The life span of the queen bee ranges from 2-5 years, while that of the worker is 35-45 days for spring and summer bees and 3-5 months for the autumn bees!
  
• The queen bee has double the weight of the worker bees and produces 2.500 eggs daily, which are 2.5 times her weight!
  
• In order for a "honeymoon" to be a success, the queen must return to the nest with 5.5 million sperm cells in her spermatheca, after mating with 8-10 drones! From this moment on, she will not mate again!
  
• The fertilized eggs develop into females, either workers or queens, while the unfertilized eggs become the drones.
  
• In periods of high nectar production, bees over 16 days old prefer to act as collectors. When nectar production ceases, however, these bees gather at the entrance of the nest in order to protect their food supply.
  
• The bee "dance" is the most advanced form of communication between members of the hive. The dance "steps" are recognized in the dark hive by the bees through hearing and touch, while the sounds accompanying the movements can be felt as vibrations in the comb. The aroma of the pollen or nectar adds to the message carried by the "dancer" bee. The bee dances mainly indicate the distance and direction of the food from the hive. The German biologist Karl von Frisch won the Nobel Prize for his work on deciphering the bee dance.
  
• Bees do not recognizer their keeper. Anyone who is familiar with bee keeping can open any hive without the bees turning against him or her.
  
• The term hive has had 316 dialectical variations throughout Greek history. In addition, there are currently areas with many more than those normally used (Karpathos - 17 forms).