Bee Facts For Kids You Might Find Fun!

Calling all budding bee lovers out there! Join us at Empire Pest Control as we go through our most fascinating bee facts for kids, where we explore honey bees and bumble bees too!

Facts About Honey Bees – What’s All The Buzz About? 

• Honey bees are one of the most important pollinators out there for flowers, fruits and vegetables. This is so amazing because it helps other plants grow. The pollen is transferred by the bees between male and female parts, which allows plants to grow seeds and fruit.

• • You’ll always find honey bees living in a hive. There are 3 members of the hives:
    1. Queen – The queen rules the whole hive. She lays the eggs and makes sure there’s another generation of bees ready. She also produces chemicals that helps the other bees behave.
    2. Workers – All of the workers are females and they forage for food, build and protect the hive, clean and even circulate the air by beating their wings. The bees you normally see flying round outside are normally the worker bees.
    3. Drones – The male bees. They mate with the queen and only live in the hive for spring and summer. Once winter comes they get evicted.
  • Honey bees are famous for one thing. Honey, of course! But the honey isn’t meant for us, it’s for them. They have it as a food store for winter. But because they produce 2-3 times more honey than they need, we get to enjoy the sweet treat too.
  • Honey bees are fantastic at flying. They can reach speeds of around 25km per hour and beat their wings 200 times per second. Yep, we have all the best bee facts for kids!

• Every honey bee has a seriously strong sense of smell, with over 170 odorant receptors. They use this to communicate around the hive. They also can sniff out different types of flowers when they need food.

• The queen bee is the busiest bee of them all. Especially during the summer, when she can lay up to 2500 eggs in a day.
• Honey bees love a good boogie. They actually perform a waggle dance to share information about the best food sources with each other. It will waggle its body to show another worker bee the direction of some yummy food.
• Unfortunately over the past 15 years honey bees have been disappearing. Billions of honey bees across the world are leaving their hives and not returning. In some places up to 90% of the bee population has disappeared. Pesticides have been blamed for this decline, but now new pesticides have been developed to be harmless to honey bees.

Facts About Bumble Bees – The Fat, Fuzzy, Flying Facts! 

• • The world’s largest bumble bee lives in South America. It’s so big that people describe it as a flying mouse.
  • Bumble bee eggs are shaped like tiny little sausages. A one of our rather silly but surprisingly true bee facts for kids!

• Bumble bees flap their wings 200 times a second. This is similar to the RPM of some motorbike engines.
• Bumble bees have to eat a lot. They have very fast metabolisms so have to eat continuously.
• The nest of a bumble bee is much smaller than the honey bee. They only have around 300 to 400 worker bees, compared to the thousands you’ll find in a honey bee nest.
• Queen bumble bees are in full control of the genetics of their offspring. The male bumble bee only has one chromosome, so the rest comes from the queen. This means that a queen bee can decide whether she wants a girl or a boy every time she lays an egg.
• Bumble bees don’t die when they sting. That’s only something that happens to honey bees. So yes, a bumble bee can sting you more than once. However, the male bumble bees don’t have a stinger at all. And the female bumble bees aren’t likely to sting you. Unless you decide to go barging into their nest anytime soon, you’re safe from bumble bees.
• Scientists have to use a tool called a pooter to pick up bumble bees. It allows them to pick them up without harming them. Researches suck on the end of a tube and the bee goes in. Don’t worry though. There’s a mesh at the other end so the scientist doesn’t end up with a mouth full of bees.
• Bumble bees have smelly feet. They have oil on their feet, and when they land on flowers they leave little oily footprints. Other bees can smell these footprints and know not to land there – the nectars already gone. Bumble bees also use these smelly footprints as a welcome home mat. They leave their scent at the entrance of their nest so they can find their way back home.

Whether it’s honey bees or bumble bees that you’re interested in, there’s so many more fun bee facts for kids you can find out about them. And if you find bees anywhere around your home or garden, don’t worry. Empire Pest Control are here to take care of bee nests carefully and humanely for you.