Interesting Facts

Bees contribute more to the British economy than the Royal family. (According to research carried out at the University of Reading, the overall value of the contribution of our busy bees is £651 million a year, which is £150 million more than the Royal Family brings in through tourism. In fact 85 per cent of the UK’s apple crop and 45 per cent of our strawberry crop relies on bees to grow. These two crops alone brought in £200 million to Britain in 2012. Unfortunately honeybee colonies have slumped in the UK from 250,000 in the 1950s to fewer than 100,000 today. In Germany everyone seems to have their own beehive.)

According to Entomologist Mark Greco, the stingless bee (Trigona carbonaria) in Australia 'mummifies' any parasitic interloper that can damage its hives. (The bee wraps the live parasite in resin, wax and mud until it can't move and leaves it to starve. It sounds like some kind of weird diet / beauty treatment to me.)

Bees are more likely to land on paintings of flowers than paintings of pottery. (Whats even more interesting is that somebody actually studied this and the bees preferred Van Gogh's Sunflower painting. And who said education was a waste of time?)