All About Bees...well, maybe not All

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm currently working on a cozy mystery about a woman who owns a flower shop. The publisher is Annie's Publishing, and this book will conclude their Victorian Mansion Flower Shop Mysteries series. If you've read many of my books you know I research thoroughly. Yes, my books are fiction, but a good novel must have enough fact blended in with the story so the reader can identify with it. If you read a novel set in your hometown and the author gets the street names wrong, you're going to get irritated and you won't be able to enjoy the story.

The mystery element in this story is an attempted murder of a man who is allergic to bee stings. So I've done a lot of research about bees! I thought I'd share some of it here, because I think it's fascinating.

1. Honeybees are the only insect that produces food eaten by humans. I don't count crickets who get eaten by some adventurous diners. ick! ick!

2. A queen bee is bigger than the worker bees, and can lay 2,500 eggs per day. That's one busy mama!

3. Worker bees, the ones that gather the pollen and nectar, fly several miles on their search for food. They only live about 6 weeks, but in that time they will fly about 1 1/2 times the circumference of the earth.

4. Some bees are solitary. They don't live in hives, and therefore they rarely sting because there's no territory to protect.

5. A beehive can produce 20-60 gallons of honey each year, depending on the location, the health of the hive, and the availability of food. Some estimates are even  higher, up to 100 gallons.

6. It takes approximately 1,000 stings to kill an average-sized adult who is not allergic to bee stings. This rarely happens, except in the case of Africanized bees.

7. When King Tut's tomb was opened, they found honey. And because honey never spoils, it was still good!

8. Honeybees don't see the color red. They are most attracted to blue, purple, and yellow.

9. A bee swarm occurs when a hive produces a second queen. The hive will divide, with a good number of the workers and drones flying away with the old queen to find a new place to live, while the remaining bees raise the new queen.  A swarm can gather anywhere - trees, old buildings, under your porch. Many beekeepers love to find a swarm because they can collect the bees and install them in a new beehive in their apiary (or the place they keep their beehives). Do not try this at home!

10. This was a surprise to me: honeybees are not endangered. There are 8 species of bees that are on the endangered list, including bumble bees, but honeybees are not. The Washington Post ran an article in 2017 saying that the number of honeybees was at a 20-year high.


I'm sure you're as fascinated by all that information as I am. And if not, well, you probably didn't read this far. :-)

Thanks to my friend, poet and author Judith Moffett, for providing a ton of information about honeybees based on her experience as a beekeeper, and for helping me work out a believable plot.