Oh Honey! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Colony

Both ants and honey bees are social animals so their shared collective name of a colony makes some sense. In the wild, honey bees house themselves in natural cavities or hang in the open in nests. A beehive refers specifically to man-made enclosed structures. Pictures of man-made hives can be found as far back as before 2422 BC in the ancient Egyptian temple of Nyuserre Ini.

In terms of the other options, you could have a school of fish, a pride of lions or a crash of rhinos.

Answer: Nectar

Nectar is a sugary liquid made by plants and taken home to the hive by bees. The nectar then has some enzymes added to it and is stored in honeycombs until it hits around a 17% water content and becomes honey. The honeycomb is then capped with wax and the honey used when needed.

Bees do actually use plant sap too, but not to make honey. Propolis is a resin-like substance made with the sap to seal gaps in the hive.

Answer: Pollen

Pollen are tiny grains made by the stamen, the male part of a flower. Many plants rely on honey bees to take their pollen to the pistils of other flowers so they can reproduce. Without honey bees, we'd have a much harder time growing almonds, blackberries, oranges and many other crops!

Pollen is useful to the bees themselves as it's a good source of fat and protein for the hive. When mixed with water, the pollen can be used to make 'bee bread' which is used to feed the larvae - young - of the colony.

Answer: Hexagon

Honeycombs are made of beeswax, which itself is formed from honey and a bit of pollen. It takes about eight-and-a-half pounds of honey to create one pound of wax. These cells can then be used to store honey and pollen, or to contain their larvae.

It's certainly distinctive, but why a hexagon in the first place? Wax is precious, so using it in the most efficient way is important. The honeycomb conjecture is a mathematical proof that shows that a hexagon is the most efficient way of dividing up a surface into areas of equal size with the smallest perimeter (outer edge).

Answer: False

When honey bees feel threatened, they can inject their stinger into you. It's strongly barbed, so when the bee pulls away, it usually won't be able to safely pull the stinger back out without killing itself.

That stinger is also quite painful! If stung, seek help from an adult immediately. They can remove the stinger, clean the area with soap and water, and use ice to soothe the area. Rarely, people can have an allergic reaction to the sting and will require medical attention from a doctor.

Answer: Worker

The three main types of honey bees are workers, drones and queens.

Workers are female bees and are the only ones to typically leave the hive at all. They do most of the jobs contributing to the hive's upkeep - cleaning, guarding, building and feeding the hive are some examples.

Drones are the only male bee and appear in the late spring and early summer to mate with the queen. They eat three times as much food as workers and lack a stinger. They have never been observed feeding on flowers.

Each hive has one queen as their leader. She is constantly fed by the workers with royal jelly and always stays in the hive. After mating with several drones in late spring and early summer, she starts spawning around 1500 eggs a day until around the middle of autumn.

Answer: Bee Smoker

Beekeepers make and look after man-made hives, often as a hobby. Just like us, honey bees don't really like strangers poking around their home. They become more aggressive and release a pheromone - a chemical - that also makes other nearby bees more aggressive.

The bee smoker masks that pheromone and makes the bees feel like a fire is happening. The bees have their own version of the school fire drill: they go back in the hive, eat as much honey as they can and eventually leave to make a new home if they really have to. The beekeeper can more easily do their work around the hive when the bees are calm and will normally only smoke the hive out for as short a time as necessary.

Answer: Winter

When temperatures fall below 10C, honey bees retreat into their hives and form a winter cluster around the queen. Like emperor penguins, the worker bees rotate around to share the burden and make sure no one gets too cold at the edges. Their stores of honey allow them to shiver and stay active during the winter.

In a harsher winter they could consume over 100 pounds of honey! Beekeepers always make sure to leave their bees plenty of honey to live on in such cold times.

Answer: Wings

We perceive sounds as vibrations in the air. When hovering around, the honey bees' wings are rapidly flapping back and forth making many vibrations a second which we hear as a buzz. Like how our heart rate gets faster when we're tense, honey bees also emit a higher sounding buzz when their hive is being disturbed.

Strange but true: honey bees also generate an electrical field when buzzing around, a little bit like the static electricity we get if we rub a balloon on our hair.

Answer: Waggle Dance

It might be worth getting a video clip up to have a look for yourself! This fascinating dance resembles a figure of eight with a wave-like motion - the waggle - in the middle. Ethologist Karl von Frisch showed that bees use the dance to tell each other where and how far away resource sites like flowers, water and nest-sites are.

A long waggle indicates the resource is further away, and the waggle's direction shows where the resource is when compared with the position of the sun.