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About This Quiz
Bees: a lot of people fear them, but it would be a grim world indeed if we had to live without them. The scarier but actually much more helpful and agreeable cousin of the wasp, the bee is a badass among creation. Bees create complex societies and build massive hives to live in. They sometimes grow and shed their wings. They sacrifice themselves for a queen. They make delicious honey that a lot of humans throughout history had to use as the ultimate sweetener (sugar cane not having reached their homelands yet).
Best of all, bees pollinate all sorts of plants. This is an essential component of the circle of life for a huge variety of crops, flowers, trees and bushes. With more and more of the calories humans consume coming from fewer main crops, the role of bees is becoming ever more important to us, and their protection and survival should be a very high priority indeed. Sadly, neonicotinoid pesticides used excessively throughout the world have seriously damaged bee populations, and better practices to protect bees are only just now becoming clear. What we can say for sure are two things: one, if the bees go, many of us will go with them; and two, the more we know about them, the better we can do by them.
Let's make sure you've got your bee knowledge down, so we can help our black-and-yellow little friends thrive in this crazy modern world.
What kind of bee dies after they sting you?
Bumblebees
Honeybees
Honeybees are the only kind of bee that die after stinging -- and it's because they can't pull their barbed stinger out of human skin. When they fly away, they leave behind their stinger as well as parts of their abdomen and digestive tract. Only female honeybees will sting you if threatened, since males don't have stingers.
Social wasps
This happens to all bees.
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Honeybees' lives are determined for them. Which is not a job that bees are hardwired to do for the hive?
Beekeeper
Worker bees, for instance, might scout for new food sources. Drones, all of whom are male, mate with the queen. And the queen, well she's busy laying fertilized eggs.
Drones
Queen
Workers
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Out of 20,000 kinds of bees, how many make honey?
1
Not all bees make and eat honey. In fact, only honeybees make and consume honey (they live off of it in the winter months), as well as construct wax structures, honeycomb, for storage.
4
About 1,000
Don't all bees make honey?
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During the winter months, worker bees can live for up to nine months. But how long do they live in the summertime?
About 9 or 10 years
Between 3 months and 3 years
Exactly 380,352 hours
No more than six weeks
In the colder months of the year, worker bees can live for several months inside the hive. In the summertime, though, it's pollination season, and they quite literally work themselves to death after no more than six weeks.
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How many eggs does a honey bee queen lay in a single day?
As many as 300,000
As many as 2,000
A honeybee queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs in the comb. It only takes a few seconds per egg, and she's constantly tended to by her worker bees.
Between 1 and 100
Just 3 or 4
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How many eyes do honeybees have?
3
5
Honeybees have more eyes than humans -- 3 more, to be exact. They have a pair of large compound eyes, one on each side of their head. And in addition, they have three small eyes called ocelli, found on the top of their head. Together, honeybees are able to see color, light, and motion.
8
12
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How many flowers would a honeybee need to visit to make one pound of honey?
Just one a day
Between 50 and 100
About 55,000
About 2 million
Just one honeybee visits between 50 and 100 flowers on a single trip, and she'll produce a total of about 1/12 teaspoon of honey during her lifetime. Altogether, it would take an estimated 768 honeybees flying over 55,000 miles to visit 2 million flowers to produce a single pound of honey -- and if that sounds like a lot, consider that the average honeybee hive produces as much as 400 pounds of honey every single year.
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Honeybees have two stomachs. One is used in eating, but what's the other one used for?
For storing flowers
For storing nectar
One cool thing about honeybees' bodies is that they have two stomachs. One stomach is used for eating and digestion. The other? It's used to store and carry back to the hive the nectar collected from pollinating flowers.
For storing petals
For storing sap
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Which member of the honeybee population doesn't have a stinger?
Drone
Male honeybees, which are called drones, can't sting you -- even if they wanted to, they don't have a stinger. Only female honeybees, including the queen and all the worker bees, are able to sting.
Queen
Worker
All honeybees have stingers.
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Do all bees live in hives?
Yes, all bees live in hives.
No, but the majority live in hives.
No, only about 10 percent live in hives.
Although we think of all bees as if they were honeybees, it's true that only 10 percent of all bee species are social and live in colonies. Many types of bees are solitary, not social, preferring to live in their own nests, often located in the ground or in tree trunks.
No, only stingless bees live in hives.
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How do drones become drones, instead of worker bees?
Drones come from fertilized eggs.
Drones come from unfertilized eggs.
When the queen is laying eggs, it's the fertilized ones that become either infertile female workers or a new, fertile queen. The unfertilized eggs become the drones of the hive.
Drones are small and weak.
The larva was fed a special food, royal jelly.
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How many species of bees live in the United States, native or imported?
4
80
4,000
From the carpenters, foragers and miners to the honeybees, the cuckoo bees and Africanized "killer" bees, there are an estimated 4,000 species of bees throughout the U.S.
4 million
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What is fed to a newly hatched female that causes her to develop into a fertile queen?
High fructose corn syrup
Maple syrup
Molasses
Royal jelly
Worker bees who work as nurses feed all the young worker bees a honeybee-produced "milk" called royal jelly during the first few days larva is out of the egg. All are then given pollen and honey, except for one -- the queen larva -- that continues to be reared on royal jelly alone.
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How many sides does one honeycomb cell have?
2
4
6
Bees make six-sided hexagons, each side of equal length. All stuck together, these make up the structure that contains both their larva and stores their honey inside their nests.
8
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How fast does a honeybee fly?
1 mph
15 mph
There are a few variables, such as whether or not they're carrying nectar, but, on average, honeybees fly at 15 miles per hour -- and are capable of speeds up to 20 mph.
88 mph
199 mph
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Which is the way honeybees communicate with each other about how far away pollen and nectar sources are?
The Moon Walk
The Robot
The Round Dance
The Waggle Dance
The round dance is a dance done by worker bees (specifically, foragers), but it's done to communicate where to find food nearby. It's the waggle dance that's used to communicate where food sources more than 100 feet away are. No one has noticed honeybees doing the moon walk or the robot, though.
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What is honey made of?
Cactus juice
Flower nectar
Honey is made from the nectar collected by worker honeybees. Carried back to the hive, the bees then regurgitate it, along with enzymes from their bodies, and fan it with their wings until through evaporation, it becomes the honey we know. It's stored in the cells of the wax comb, and it never spoils.
Royal jelly
Wax
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Do all bees make honey?
Yes, all bees do.
No, only honeybees do.
Not all bees make honey. In fact, the honey we're used to eating comes only from honey bees. However, some other subsets of bees in the genus Apis, such as bumblebees, can, and do, too, but it's not the same as honey bee honey that we know, and not nearly as much of it is made.
No, honeybees and their relatives.
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How many queens live in one hive?
1
Queens are made, not born, and there can be only one -- per hive, that is. Until the 1660s when it was discovered they had ovaries, queens were called kings.
2
100
1,000
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About how much is a lethal dose of honeybee venom?
About 13 stings for a 150-pound person
About 130 stings for a 150-pound person
About 1,300 stings for a 150-pound person
When it stings, a honeybee injects 0.1 mg of venom through its stinger. About 1,300 honeybee stings could deliver a lethal dose of honeybee venom to a 150-pound person.
About 130,000 stings for a 150-pound person
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What color can't bees see?
Blue
Green
Purple
Red
The world is full of blues and purples, if you're a bee. Unlike humans who see red, green and blue, bees see blue, green, and ultraviolet -- and they aren't able to see red.
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How warm is it in a honeybee hive?
About 33º F
About 63º F
About 93º F
Honeybees keep a constant temperature in their hives, a balmy 93 degrees F all year long. It's important for keeping the colony alive, and for keeping the brood nest (the eggs) healthy.
About 113º F
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Which kind of bee isn't native to the United States?
Beewolves
Bumblebees
Honeybees
There are 4,000 native bee species in the United States, but honeybees aren't among them. It's believed they were first brought to the colonies in the early 1600s.
Sweat bees
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Is it true bees won't sting at night?
Yes, that's true.
No, that's not true.
Although this belief has been around for a long time, it's actually a myth. Bees do sting at night -- and at any time, if they feel threatened.
It depends on the type of bee.
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Which deity is associated with bees and their honey?
Aphrodite
Ra
Vishnu
All of these, and still more.
More than one deity has been associated with bees and with honey throughout the ages. Among them, and in various religions and beliefs, are Aphrodite, Cybele, Pan, Ra and Vishnu.
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Stingless bees, as their name suggests, don't sting. So how do they defend themselves and their nest?
They bite.
There are many types of stingless bees, but they all have two things in common. One: stingless bees don't have stingers, so there's just no way they can sting you. And, two: stingless bees defend their homes and themselves by biting.
They change color.
They expel a foul-smelling fluid.
They have a spikes on their bodies.
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How much of all the fruits, vegetables, and seed crops in the U.S. are pollinated by honeybees?
10 percent
50 percent
80 percent
Honeybees really do live up to the simile, "busy as a bee." They're responsible for pollinating as much as 80 percent of all the fruits, vegetables, and seed crops in the U.S.
100 percent
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What creates the distinctive buzz of a honeybee's wings?
A full honey stomach
Beating of their wings
Honeybees have two pairs of wings, each beating 250 times every second -- and that fast stroke gives them their distinctive buzz.
The sound of gathering nectar
The sound of regurgitating nectar
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Honey is primarily made up of which two sugars?
Granulated and liquid
Galactose and lactose
Fructose and glucose
Just like table sugar, honey is made of simple sugars. It's a combination of fructose and glucose, with more fructose than glucose, and also contains small percentages of other carbohydrate groups called oligosaccharides.
Cellulose and pectin
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Traditionally, what do beekeepers use to calm bees while relocating a hive or collecting honey?
A mixture of sugar, vinegar, and banana peel
Insecticide dust
Smoke
An active, thriving colony can have as many as 40,000 to 60,000 honeybees -- and sometimes beekeepers need to safely get to the hive. For times when a hive is being relocated or honey is being collected, smoke is used to keep bees calm, typically dispersed with a bee smoker. The smoke interrupts guard bees' defensive response -- and rather than sounding the alarm to the colony, it makes bees hungry for honey.
Soapy water
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Which special healing quality does honey have?
It helps you relax.
It's high in fiber.
It's a good substitute for a short-arm cast.
It's anti-microbial.
Honey's healing benefits are all due to its anti-microbial properties, in particular a honeybee protein called defensin-1. Medical-grade honey helps as a barrier against infection, and because it keeps wounds moist it helps with repair and healing.
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Is it true that bees can recognize human faces?
Yes, they do recognize human faces.
It's called configular processing, and humans do it, too. We. and honeybees, look at all the parts of a face, such as ears, eyes, and lips, and we're then able to whirl those parts together into a whole face -- one you either recognize or don't.
Yes, but only the workers can do this.
No, bees cannot do this.
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Is a paper wasp a type of bee?
Yes, a wasp is a type of aggressive bee.
Yes, a wasp is just a very large bee.
No, a wasp is not a bee.
Wasps and bees belong to the same order of insects, hymenopterans, but wasps aren't bees and bees aren't wasps (however, yellow jackets and hornets are wasps). One big difference is their diet: While bees are vegetarians, wasps are carnivores.
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Will eating local honey every day prevent or ease seasonal allergies?
Yes, any unprocessed honey will work.
Yes, as long as it's local honey.
It's a good theory, but there's no solid evidence.
Immunotherapy can include eating small amounts of something you've had an allergic reaction to in order to make your body less sensitive to it over time. It's an interesting theory that local, unprocessed honey could help ease seasonal allergies, but since there's no way of knowing what kinds of flower nectar went into it, it's impossible to know if it helps.
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What's the risk of feeding honey to babies younger than age 1?
Anthrax infection
Botulism infection
Because it may contain botulism spores, it's recommended that honey never be given to kids who are less than one year old -- babies' immune systems aren't developed enough to fight the bacteria until after their first birthday. Botulism is caused by spores of Clostridium botulinum (C. botulinum), a bacteria that's readily found in dirt.
Choking
E. coli infection
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