Just for Fun: We’re Buzzing With A Hiveful of Fascinating Facts For World Bee Day
Today is World Bee Day and we’re all abuzz with our favourite fascinating facts about bees! Plus, we get stuck into why stick on name labels are the perfect solution to the sticky problem of lost property.
Brilliant Facts About Fabulous Bees!
Today is World Bee Day; a day to raise awareness of the importance of bees as pollinators. The 20th May is the birthday of Anton Janš; a Slovenian beekeeper who pioneered modern beekeeping methods and taught apiculture at the School of Beekeeping in Vienna. To celebrate, here are our favourite top ten facts about bees:
- 90% of wild plants and 75% of crops depend on pollination; in total, around a third of our food depends on pollinators, like bees!
- There are around 20,000 species of bee; over 90% are solitary, while the rest live in hives or colonies. Great Britain has over 270 species of bee. You can find bees on every continent except Antarctica.
- The largest species is Megachile pluto; females can reach 38mm in length. The smallest species is Perdita Minima, which grow to around 2mm in length.
- Bees have been around for over 100 million years and evolved from wasps. Ancient fragments of pottery containing traces of beeswax suggest that human beekeeping began at least 9,000 years around.
- Hives or colonies contain three types of bee; a queen bee (to produce offspring), worker bees (female bees that forage for pollen and nectar and build and protect the hive), and drone bees (male bees that mate with the queen). Only female bees can sting because male bees don’t have a stinger.
- Worker bees live for five to six weeks, drones about eight weeks, while queens live up to five years. In the summer months, a queen bee can produce up to 3000 eggs every day. Unfertilised eggs hatch into drone bees.
- Bees have amazing bodies! They have five eyes, including two compound eyes made up of thousands of hexagonal lenses, which have tiny hairs growing on them (possibly to detect wind direction). They also have three simple eyes on the top of their heads (called the ocelli), which detect changes in light. Bees have four wings; the two wings on each side of their bodies hook together to form a larger pair of wings for flying. Bees have two stomachs; one for eating and one for storing nectar while they travel back to their hive. They also have smelly feet and can distinguish between footsteps left behind by nestmates, strangers, and themselves. This helps them avoid flowers that have already been visited. Bees are thought to have 170 odorant receptors, which helps them to tell apart different flowers.
- Bees can fly up to 20mph and flap their wings around 200 times per second. They can travel up to three miles to source food and can carry up to 122 times their body weight in pollen and nectar. To gather enough nectar to make just 450 grams of honey, bees need to fly about 55,000 miles (or double the circumference of the earth!).
- Bees use body movements to communicate; researchers at Sussex University spent two years decoding the “waggle dance” – a figure of eight movement and waggling behaviour that indicates where food can be found. Apparently, a slow waggle means the food is far away or of low quality, while a short, fast dance means good food is nearby.
- While bees have rather small brains, they are capable of complex decisions. Bees have been trained to detect bombs, landmines, and drugs, to detect illnesses in humans, and to “play” football!
Don’t Get Stuck With Lost Property; Get Sticking With Stick On Name Labels!
There are many different ways to label property but we (obviously) think stick on name labels are the bee’s knees! This is because stick on name labels are simpler and quicker to use and are far more versatile.
Instead of relying on a needle and thread, or an ironing board and transfer paper, you simply stick your name labels onto your items. It literally takes seconds to label each item, which makes the whole process of name labelling short and sweet.
Plus, where sew-in and iron-on labels are only suitable for fabric items, you can use stick on name labels on a range of items – fabric and non-fabric alike. With our stick on name labels (and our unique adhesive), you can even label fabric and non-fabric items using the same pack of labels!
As with other types of labels, you can even remove stick on name labels if you want to pass items on to another child or donate them to charity (although it might require a bit of elbow grease and sticky stuff remover!).
When you order name labels from us, we despatch your order on the same or next working day by first class post (with free delivery). It only takes a moment to place an order online or by phone. Plus, because Stikins ® name labels are so swift to buy, arrive, and apply you'll be buzzing with all the time (and money) you'll save for the sweeter things in life!