The Daily Work of the Honey Bee

Bees are so industrious in nature, that they do not waste a moment of their time. When the sun has risen and the flowers spread themselves wide open for the bees to come and take their pollen until the sun declines towards the horizon, you may observe bees working diligently.

Some bees, if they find an ideal spot from which to gather pollen, may go back and forth from the spot to the hive up to ten times per hour.

Years ago, in the Eighteenth century, Sir John Lubbock in Great Britain was an early observer of the habits of bees. He marked a number of his bees, so that he could observe their behavior.

What he discovered was that most of the bees would stay at the same spot gathering pollen for about two minutes and would then leave for the hive and return in about six minutes. Then it repeated the process all over again. Each honey bee would make nearly one hundred trips in a day.

So the term “busy as a bee” comes to mind when you think of the hard and persevering work the bees do day and day out.