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Athens News Matters: Bees!

A beehive
Jessica Wurst

Some 30% of the food we consume is directly impacted by the efforts of bees, but veterinarians often don’t know much about maintaining the health of bee colonies. A new UGA initiative is working to change that.

Plus, Dr. Joerg Mayer and Amanda Saulnier were kind enough to provide us with some more handy bee facts:

  • Bees have different jobs and when honeybees switch positions, their brain chemistry changes
  • There are three types of bees in a colony: the queen, the workers, and the drones
  • The queen bee has a blue spot and a bigger but than the rest of the bees
  • Bees have the ability to recognize human faces
  • Bees use natural caffeine to remember where flowers are
  • Bees have five eyes
  • A queen lays one egg in 43 seconds
  • When building a new hive, they seal off all the edges to control the temperature
  • Bees must visit 2 million flowers to make a one-pound jar of honey.
  • Honey bees can visit 5,000 flowers in one day.