20 Things You Didn't Know About... Bees

Undertaker bees, the queens who were called kings, how honey helps wounds...

By Liza Lentini
Mar 8, 2007 12:00 AMMay 17, 2019 9:35 PM
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1 There are 16,000 species. Most are solitary insects; only about 5 percent are social bees, the most common being the honeybee. As many as 80,000 of them colonize a single hive.

2 Drones—the male honeybees—live only for mating with the queen. If there is a shortage of food in the hive, the workers kick their lazy, gigolo asses out.

3 To die for: When drones mate, they die afterwards from a ruptured abdomen. Sex detaches their endophallus, which gets stuck inside the queen.

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