BEE-autiful!

Bzzzzz Bzz—zzzz—Bzz!

That’s Honeybee for “Happy Honeybee Awareness Day!” Today we celebrate honeybees for all they do and the delicious honey they provide! started by beekeepers, Honeybee Awareness Day was started to develop awareness of the community about the facts and the benefits of honey. I covered it all pretty well last year. You can check out more details about the day itself by clicking here.

For this year, I thought we could discover some interesting facts about honeybees themselves. Let’s learn about these lovely insects!

Most creatures on the Earth have symmetrical faces with two ears, two nostrils, and two eyes. But bugs are very different creatures. Bees in particular don’t just have two eyes—not just three eyes and not just four eyes—but they have FIVE eyes!!! Interestingly, they’re able to see many shades of colors beyond our perception further down the spectrum than blue and indigo. They’re ability to pick up on shades of red, however, fails them.

Not quite the fastest flighted insect out there—that title belongs to dragonflies who can go zooming by at a whopping 35 miles per hour—bees can do a stunning 20 miles per hour! That’s nothing to sneeze at when considering that your body can’t transport itself much faster than five miles per hour without tuckering out before long.

If you think the city is overcrowded, then it’s a good thing you don’t live in a beehive! These structured nests made of secreted and chewed up beeswax house around 50,000 bees, on average. That’s a lot of bees. And the inside is filled with honeycomb cells which are used to store honey, pollen, and...BEE EGGS to hatch MORE BEES! When a hive is growing too big to support the colony’s numbers, a sizable chunk of the bees will literally break away in a swarm and travel elsewhere to start a new colony.

Bees are absolutely fascinating creatures. Their means of defense is a death sentence as they don’t live long after losing their stingers. And their pollinating routine is responsible for an entire third of the produce we enjoy in our grocery stores. To bees everywhere, we salute you. And, as always, thanks for reading, Camp Fans! Buzz on!

- John