20 Things About Honey Bees That’ll Impress You

ROOTS IN SASKATCHEWAN BEEKEEPING

In a presentation about beekeeping at Saskatchewan's Ness Creek Music Festival in the summer of 2025, owner of Kitako Lake Honey, Steven Hawrisok spoke about his true appreciation for bees coming later in life. “I grew up beekeeping, so all the summers of my childhood were spent drenched head to toe in honey and being stung by bees dozens of times per day.” Although it wasn’t in his plans after he grew up and left home, in his early 20’s he decided to return to bees. He says, “I kind of saw things in a new light. I looked at bees and beekeeping not only as an obligation, but was able to appreciate what the bees did, and how much work it took them to produce honey.” It’s easy to take bees for granted, but we shouldn’t. Here are 20 amazing facts about honey bees and honey production in Saskatchewan gleaned from Steven’s presentation: 

1. Bees are covered, head to toe in tiny tiny little hairs.  ( see fact # 10!) 

2. They perform one of the most important life sustaining ecosystem functions in the world (pollination) completely by accident because it’s their life’s purpose to collect as much pollen and nectar as possible, which means flying from flower to flower to flower all day long and thus pollination happens conveniently inadvertently. 

3. 80% of crops and wildflowers that humans use for food and medicine are pollinated by honey bees. 

4. The ones you see out and about are female. Worker bees are all female and they perform all foraging and colony maintenance. While male bees (drones) do fly outside, they rarely leave the immediate vicinity of the hive. 

5. During flight, bees' wings will flap really fast—around  300 times per second. The vibration created by their fast wingbeats sounds to us humans like buzzing. 

6. A bee can fly at a speed of 25km per hour in search of flowers.

7. A bee is drawn to a flower she likes by scent, color, and proximity to the hive. Bees know which flowers have the best smell, colour, and which offer the easiest access to nectar and pollen. Canola is one of their favourites, for example. 

8. Bees use a special organ called the proboscis, which is like a long tongue to suck up nectar from the flower’s nectar gland into her specialized stomach. 

9. A bee can carry her own bodyweight in nectar back to the hive, which is about 60mg. Despite this relatively huge load of nectar, that’s just a very small part of what is needed to produce a teaspoon of honey.
   

10. Bees pick up pollen by static electricity! Through friction with air during flight, they acquire a positive electrostatic charge, which causes negatively charged pollen to "jump" from flowers onto the hairs all over their bodies (see fact #1). 

11. The bee's knees phrase from the 1920’s Jazz Era refers to the special organs on their hind legs called corbiculae, or pollen baskets, that they use to carry pollen from flowers back to the hive. First they use their legs to comb the pollen from all over their hairy bodies before they can gather it up and pack it into the corbiculae. 

12. While foraging, a bee can visit 50-100 flowers per trip. She will make continuous trips from first to last light every day for her lifespan of 6 weeks.

13. A bee will return to the hive once her stomach is full of nectar and she’s carrying enough pollen to double her bodyweight. 

14. Bees regurgitate the nectar they collect from flowers into honeycomb cells in the hive, where it is stored and made into honey and bee bread later. 

15. Bee saliva is a key component in making nectar into honey. 

16. Bees use their wings to circulate air around the hive. They preserve nectar in honeycombs by fanning it with their wings to circulate air and remove excess moisture to keep it from spoiling before it’s made into honey. 

17. Bees' saliva contains lactic acid, which they use to ferment honey into a longer lasting food source for their young, called bee bread. 

18. A queen is the sole egg layer of the hive and she can lay 1000 eggs in a single day. Her egg-laying rate varies with season and hive needs. It’s the hive's responsibility to feed and nurture the eggs while they grow up. 

19. A single bee will visit, on average, more than 150,000 flowers in her lifetime, collecting enough nectar to produce one gram, or one fifth of a teaspoon of honey. 

20. It would take the entire life’s work of 5 honey bees to produce a teaspoon of honey—an amount we humans would easily consume in a single cup of tea. 

RAW LOCAL HONEY, PURE AND FRESH FROM SASKATCHEWAN BEES

If you like these facts, you might want to read more about How Bees Make Honey. Every teaspoon of honey represents thousands of flowers, millions of wingbeats, and a lifetime of effort from tiny workers. They have an impact that reaches across Saskatchewan’s farm fields and wildflowers. Understanding how bees live and work helps us appreciate not only honey, but the delicate ecosystem that supports our food systems. The next time you drizzle honey into your tea, remember: you’re tasting the result of nature’s most dedicated workforce.

Get your hands on some of the best honey in Saskatchewan: visit our online shop or find a store near you.