A Bees Life

A bee colony can be compared to a small city. It contains 30,000 to 60,000 bee workers, from 300 to 1,000 male broods, and the queen bee.
The queen bee is the only member of the bee colony that lays eggs. She can produce up to 2,000 eggs in a day.
The queen bee usually lives from 1 to 4 years, while the worker bees live from 6 to 8 weeks in summer and from 4 to 6 months in winter.
Honey bees do not hibernate, but they gather together into winter clusters and warm themselves up. They remain active all winter long.
Without a queen bee, the colony slowly dies out.
Honey bees are the only bee species that die after a sting.

Wax

Wax is produced by the glands of worker bees, which they need to build the honeycomb and to seal the top of honey-filled cells.
Beeswax contains over 300 natural compounds. Fresh wax is almost pure white, whereas later it turns a yellowish-brown colour. It has a pleasant scent reminiscent of honey, propolis and pollen.
The cosmetics industry loves it
Wax is often added to creams because it makes skin soft and supple and has antibiotic properties.

Pollen is extremely rich in protein. It contains all the essential amino acids, various fatty acids, vitamins B, C, D, E and K, and provitamin A.
Bees get covered in pollen as they collect nectar from plants, then they enrich it with different ferments, hormones and antibiotic substances, and deposit it in honeycomb cells.
It is recommended to soak pollen before ingesting it

Propolis in particular is the beehive’s very special treasure because it is a natural antibiotic. Bees collect resin from a variety of trees and shrubs and blend it with pollen pellets while feeding larvae. Over 360 substances have already been found in it.
We know of various pharmaceutical preparations made with propolis, such as ointments, tablets, injections and solutions that can be used topically.

Royal jelly is secreted by the glands of young worker bees. Nurse bees feed the jelly to the larvae, which are up to three days old, whereas queen bees live exclusively on it. It is this distinctive food that decides whether a worker or a queen bee will hatch from the larva.
When the honeycomb cells contain the largest amounts of royal jelly, beekeepers harvest it. Production of extensive amounts of royal jelly is, however, very demanding.
Royal jelly improves general wellbeing and brain function
Because it alleviates conditions and inconveniences related to ageing, which, among other things, are connected to a deficient diet, it has proven to be an excellent dietary supplement particularly for the elderly.

Honey bee (Apis mellifera) is just one of 20,000 types of bees that we know and one of the few that is used for the production of honey.
Bees pollinate as many as 170,000 species of plants.
Fruits and vegetables would be much less abundant without bees.
Every third spoonful of food we eat is dependent on pollination.
Bees and other pollinators significantly contribute to the world’s food security.
One honey bee alone can produce 1/12 teaspoon of honey in its life.
To make a kilogram of honey, a bee must visit four million flowers and fly four times the distance around the world